An overwrought and highly precious first novel by the Oxford don and essayist whose previous works (Where I Fell to Earth, 1990, etc.) displayed a rather florid imagination reluctantly reined in. Here, he pulls out all the stops. On the edge of an unnamed city at an unimaginable future date, gangs of outcasts and criminals live in a desolate valley, where they traffic in stolen goods and prey upon such unfortunate commuters who wander in by mistake. One of these, a prosperous and rather obnoxious businessman, is robbed, killed, and dismembered by a pack of hooligans who wrap the severed head in a bundle and play football with it. The crime is witnessed by Wilf, a local boy who subsequently flees into the city, where he is adopted by Kate, an artist who is drawn to the valley by the same violence and desperation that drove Wilf away. Kate's boyfriend, Paul, is an architect who dreams of creating a new city in the valley, and the two prevail upon Wilf to bring them into a world that he was only too happy to abandon. A deranged Jehovah's Witness, a sadistic thief with chronic indigestion, a gasworks whose perpetual flames illumine the valley at night, and a subterranean tunnel that is the locus of much misfortune are a few of the more obvious elements of this tale, in which the allegory is laid on with a trowel. The pity of it all is that Conrad's prose is lucid and engaging enough to make coherence of theme and progression of narrative seem unnecessary luxuries—for a spell. But the aimlessness of the story eventually becomes an aggravation. Pointless and artificial: the characters and situations are contrived in the extreme and entirely unconvincing. Too many points are being made with too little finesse by a narrator whose tone throughout is far more academic than imaginative.
Pub Date: May 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-75884-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992
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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