An unwelcome hint that the man who was executed long ago for the murder of Christian Napier’s great-uncle brings back the past with a rush in Goddard’s latest demi-period thriller (Out of the Sun, 1997, etc.). Everybody knows that Joshua Carnoweth, the Croesus of the Cornish town of Truro, was stabbed to death by ne’er-do-well Edmund Tully. Tully confessed to taking $500 to commit the crime back in 1947, showing the well-rehearsed remorse that earned him a life sentence that ended with his release in 1969. But Michael Lanyon—the son of the love Joshua left behind when he went off to make his fortune in the Klondike, the young man he’d brought up on his estate and regarded as his heir, and the man Tully insisted had hired him to kill the old man—was promptly hanged and the matter forgotten (or so it seems) until 1981, when Michael’s son Nicky, Chris Napier’s childhood friend, turns up at a family wedding to enlist Chris’s help in clearing his father’s name—only to hang himself that night. Stung by guilt and nagging suspicions of his family, and urged on by Nicky’s long-lost sister Michaela, Chris toils to uncover the truth, which obligingly unrolls in Goddard’s ceremonious periods (“The past is a room you only realize you’ve left when you hear the door close behind you”). Wading through thickets of well-groomed family skeletons, Chris finds two generations of lies and felonies devoted to covering up the truth practically nobody but him had truly forgotten before stumbling on Goddard’s trademark malefactor: a survivor of the past determined to get revenge on Joshua’s family, even (or especially) if it means impersonation, blackmail, arson, murder—whatever it takes to bring every family member to his or her trembling knees. The period trappings are generally kept to a seemly modicum, and the suspense mounts to a fine crescendo. A superior example of Goddard’s velvet-cloaked menace.
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-8050-5110-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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