From Sports Illustrated writer Reilly, easily the wittiest golf novel yet—the Bull Durham of the genre, and the closest thing to Caddyshack on paper we're likely to get. The golf-book genre usually falls into two categories: bios of the game's great players, first, and quasi-spiritual agons, second, such as Steven Pressfield's The Legend of Bagger Vance (1995), in which sulking has-been linksters return to the fairways to redeem themselves. The former are written for golfers who like to read, the latter for readers who like to golf. Reilly's debut, however, stands on its own, with a gaggle of loopy characters plucked off the country's municipal courses. They have nicknames like Two Down, Thud, Crowbar, and Stick, and their course is a dogpatch strip called Ponky, where the hazards aren't sand and water but abandoned cars and shopping carts. Stick, a.k.a. Raymond Hart, is a fine golfer who's allowed his talent to decline into lethargy, whiling away his days trying to fleece his golf buddies (the ``Chops''). But his life is irrevocably altered when unexpected damage to a hedge reveals an enticing view of the Mayflower, the original snooty WASP haven. The men become consumed by the private Mayflower's perfectly manicured expanse and create a sizable betting pool to reward the first of their brethren managing to play a full 18 holes. Ray should win in a stroll; his father, unbeknownst to the other Chops, is a Mayflower member. But Ray has Oedipal problems, so he vacillates over asking his Old Man for a round. Meanwhile, his buddies devise increasingly elaborate schemes to snare the dough. The first half of the book ends with the winning of the bet. The second involves Ray's love life and a grudge match with his father. A loving, knowledgeable, laugh-out-loud portrait of the Hardest Sport There Is, as practiced by the blue-collar rakes who compose golf's most devoted fans. (Author tour)
Pub Date: June 8, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-47443-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
The Stand did less well than The Shining, and The Dead Zone will do less well than either—as the King of high horror (Carrie) continues to move away from the grand-gothic strain that once distinguished him from the other purveyors of psychic melodrama. Here he's taken on a political-suspense plot formula that others have done far better, giving it just the merest trappings of deviltry. Johnnie Smith of Cleaves Mills, Maine, is a super-psychic; after a four-year coma, he has woken up to find that he can see the future—all of it except for certain areas he calls the "dead zone." So Johnnie can do great things, like saving a friend from death-by-lightning or reuniting his doctor with long-lost relatives. But Johnnie also can see a horrible presidential candidate on the horizon. He's Mayor Gregory Aromas Stillson of Ridgeway, N.H., and only Johnnie knows that this apparently klutzy candidate is really the devil incarnate—that if Stillson is elected he'll become the new Hitler and plunge the world into atomic horror! What can Johnnie do? All he can do is try to assassinate this Satanic candidate—in a climactic shootout that is recycled and lackluster and not helped by King's clumsy social commentary (". . . it was as American as The Wonderful Worm of Disney"). Johnnie is a faceless hero, and never has King's banal, pulpy writing been so noticeable in its once-through-the-typewriter blather and carelessness. Yes, the King byline will ensure a sizeable turnout, but the word will soon get around that the author of Carrie has this time churned out a ho-hum dud.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1979
ISBN: 0451155750
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1979
Clunky prose and long-winded dissertations on comparative religion can’t impede the breathless momentum of the Demon-Drop...
A convicted murderer who may be a latter-day Messiah wants to donate his heart to the sister of one of his victims, in Picoult’s frantic 15th (Nineteen Minutes, 2007, etc.).
Picoult specializes in hot-button issues. This latest blockbuster-to-be stars New Hampshire’s first death-row inmate in decades, Shay Bourne, a 33-year-old carpenter and drifter convicted of murdering the police officer husband of his employer, June, and her seven-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. Eleven years later Shay is still awaiting execution by lethal injection. Suddenly, miracles start to happen around Shay—cell-block tap water turns to wine, an AIDS-stricken fellow inmate is cured, a pet bird and then a guard are resurrected from the dead. Shay’s spiritual adviser, Father Michael, is beginning to believe that Shay is a reincarnation of Christ, particularly when the uneducated man starts quoting key phrases from the Gnostic gospels. Michael hasn’t told Shay that he served on the jury that condemned him to death. June’s daughter Claire, in dire need of a heart transplant, is slowly dying. When Shay, obeying the Gnostic prescription to “bring forth what is within you,” offers, through his attorney, ACLU activist Maggie, to donate his heart, June is at first repelled. Practical obstacles also arise: A viable heart cannot be harvested from a lethally injected donor. So Maggie sues in Federal Court to require the state to hang Shay instead, on the grounds that his intended gift is integral to his religious beliefs. Shay’s execution looms, and then Father Michael learns more troubling news: Shay, who, like Jesus, didn’t defend himself at trial, may be innocent.
Clunky prose and long-winded dissertations on comparative religion can’t impede the breathless momentum of the Demon-Drop plot.Pub Date: March 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7434-9674-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2008
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