American boy technowhiz and stunt aviator meets Soviet girl technowhiz and stunt aviatrix, and they exchange political, technical, and physical intimacies while the world prepares to go to war. White also wrote The Flight from Winter's Shadow (1991). Saddam Hussein is amassing his forces on the Kuwait border but foolish American policies seem unaware. Funding for Wyn Gallagher's piece of Star Wars, an incredibly intelligent optical target acquisition device, dries up, and Wyn is left with nothing to do but practice his stunt flying—until he crashes his plane and can't even practice. Out of the blue comes a private sector offer to send him with a fat check to Moscow, where the Russians have begun to take orders for their hot new stunt plane, the best in the world. Wyn's only duty in exchange for the price of the plane is to slip an envelope to rival stunt artist and inventor Elena Pasvalys, who, he is told, is ready to defect. Dr. Pasvalys has invented a diamond coating that, when paired with Wyn's gun sight, would make it possible to shoot down missiles from space. And, as it happens, there is a missile about to go off. The Iraqis have hidden nuclear weapons in the Libyan desert, and they are dying to try them out. After Dr. Pasvalys and Wyn Gallagher have a cute-meet in a midair collision, Wyn finds that his case manager has been less than truthful: Dr. Pasvalys has no intentions of leaving the USSR. Alas for her, her case manager, an old-line Leninist KGB type, is as shifty as Gallagher's, and he has her pegged for a traitor. Confusions compound until the flyers are driven to flee everybody and sort things out for themselves. Not bad. Technoweenies can be romantic after all.
Pub Date: March 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-517-57809-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Backman plays the story for both cynicism and hope, and his skill makes both hard, but not impossible, to resist.
Shockwaves from the incidents in Beartown (2017) shake an economically depressed hockey town in this latest from the author of A Man Called Ove.
Swedish novelist Backman loves an aphorism and is very good at them; evident in all his novels is an apparent ability to state a truth about humanity with breathtaking elegance. Often, he uses this same elegance to slyly misdirect his readers. Sometimes he overreaches and words that sound pretty together don’t hold up to scrutiny. This novel has a plethora of all three. Grim in tone, it features an overstocked cast of characters, all of whom are struggling for self-definition. Each has previously been shaped by the local hockey club, but that club is now being defunded and resources reallocated to the club of a rival town. Some Beartown athletes follow, some don’t. Lines are drawn in the sand. Several characters get played by a Machiavellian local politician who gets the club reinstated. Nearly all make poor decisions, rolling the town closer and closer to tragedy. Backman wants readers to know that things are complicated. Sure, many of Beartown’s residents are bigots and bullies. But some are generous and selfless. Actually, the bigots and bullies are also generous and selfless, in certain circumstances. And Lord knows they’ve all had a rough time of it. The important thing to remember is that hockey is pure. Except when it inspires violence. This is an interesting tactic for a novel in our cultural moment of sensitivity, and it can feel cumbersome. “When guys are scared of the dark they’re scared of ghosts and monsters,” he writes. “But when girls are scared of the dark they’re scared of guys.” Margaret Atwood said it better and with more authority decades ago.
Backman plays the story for both cynicism and hope, and his skill makes both hard, but not impossible, to resist.Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6079-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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