Toutonghi is an observant writer, but he stalks a demure middle ground, never offering outright humor or drama.
A run-down section of Milwaukee, as well as the fall of communism, provide the backdrop for this coming-of-age novel.
There’s a fine novella somewhere inside Toutonghi’s debut, which focuses on five months in the life of the Balodis family during the fall and winter of 1989. That’s the season when the Berlin Wall began to topple and eventually fell, but 16-year-old Yuri, bright and bookish, is more worried about life on the homefront. His father, an alcoholic with an unusual affinity for old-time country crooners, eagerly anticipates a visit from his cousin Ivan from his native Latvia, but when Ivan arrives, he’s accompanied by his wife, son and mother-in-law, crowding an already cramped apartment. Yuri’s biggest concern, though, is his growing crush on classmate Hannah, a would-be destroyer of the bourgeoisie who sells the Socialist Worker in front of a produce warehouse. The collision of ideologies between Yuri’s and Hannah’s families generates some tension, and Toutonghi makes room for some well-turned stories about the brutality of life in Latvia under Soviet rule. But the plot centers mainly on a relatively humdrum youthful indiscretion on Yuri’s part, involving a car borrowed from the dealership where his father works; alcohol; and Hannah, who proves a willing partner—it’s a crisis with little more heft than a TV teen dramedy. The author is more adept with character sketches: Eriks, Yuri’s cousin, the engaging and easy-going would-be rock star; Hammond King, the retired blues organist who offers some romantic guidance; and not least Yuri’s father, who speaks in richly tangled English and is a compelling mix of generosity and self-destructiveness.
Toutonghi is an observant writer, but he stalks a demure middle ground, never offering outright humor or drama.Pub Date: May 23, 2006
ISBN: 0-307-33675-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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