Ambitious first novel from journalist Weiss, in which a nice- ish public-service lawyer almost loses all his nice ideals in not- so-nice New York. Now in his late 20s, narrator Jack Gold has spent the last four years working for a left-wing public-interest center in New York City. More recently he's been assisting the presidential campaign of an African-American candidate, but by the night of the Democratic Convention he's feeling idealistically burned-out. Just for a change, he accepts an invitation to a party given by the handsome former secretary of state, Early Quinlan, a conservative Democrat now running for the governorship of New York. At the party Jack meets and falls in love with Quinlan's daughter, Burry, a beautiful but flaky performance artist who is also Daddy's biggest fan. The two are immediately an item, both in sophisticated New York society and on the campaign trail. Jack leaves his job to undertake special projects for the Quinlan campaign—i.e., trying to dig up dirt on Republican gubernatorial candidate Joseph Vacca. Troubled by Quinlan's snobbish friends, Burry's disconcerting vagaries, and the callousness of the campaign's operatives, Jack finds himself increasingly sympathetic to Vacca, a sort of Cuomo/Giuliani composite. When not muckraking, Jack has a lot of sex, graphically described, smokes pot, and drinks too much. Both Burry and her dad, as well as politics in general, now seem shallow to him, and New York society is not much better. In the fall everything unravels at a set-piece campaign party, and a wiser Jack leaves town to live the simple life with his folks out west. Though Weiss tries hard to be funny as well as insightful, his political points and his characters, especially Jack, are more the stuff of clichÇ than high comedy or mordant political satire. An honorable try.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-12515-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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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