An angry, once-abused woman painter almost disintegrates, then experiences a last-minute healing in an equally abused placemid- 70s Haiti: the emotional, scattershot newest from Trinidadian-born Guy (My Love, My Love, or the Peasant Girl, 1985, etc.) Jonnie Dash, a beautiful African-American artist, having sold a painting for a half-million dollars (an interesting but never explained event) goes to Haiti to see her old lover and Pygmalion, GÇrard. GÇrard was married when she first met him years before in an interracial salon in New York; now that he's widowed and available, though, Jonnie is no longer sure she loves him. Troubled by painful memories and disturbing blackouts, she flees to her favorite hotel in Haiti. Like one of those generic airport, airplane, and ship settings, this ``old Hotel'' is frequented by a range of characters whom Jonnie seduces, befriends, attacks, and fears. It's the Watergate era, which gives Jonnie a chance not only to pontificate on the infamy of the US and obnoxious Americans abroad, but on Haitian and African history as well. She also recalls her life as an orphan, her rape by a Catholic priest, life on New York streets, the drawings of sexual organs that made her famous, a failed marriage, and a son shot and killed by the police as he ran away from a bungled burglary. Amid all this are encounters with sinister Haitians and arrogant whites; raunchy sex with Stephan, toy-boy of wealthy friend Jessica; pursuit by a nasty foreign service officer who uses the notorious Tonton Macoute to help him find Lucknair, the small boy he's in love with; puzzling deaths; and the improbable rescue of Lucknair that, together with Jonnie's affair with a black revolutionary, will apparently save her. Somewhere within this clutter of melodramatic action and attitude there lurks an interesting heroine with an interesting story to tell, but, sadly, she's not easy to find.
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1995
ISBN: 0-525-24780-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The previous books of this author (Devil of a State, 1962; The Right to an Answer, 1961) had valid points of satire, some humor, and a contemporary view, but here the picture is all out—from a time in the future to an argot that makes such demands on the reader that no one could care less after the first two pages.
If anyone geta beyond that—this is the first person story of Alex, a teen-age hoodlum, who, in step with his times, viddies himself and the world around him without a care for law, decency, honesty; whose autobiographical language has droogies to follow his orders, wallow in his hate and murder moods, accents the vonof human hole products. Betrayed by his dictatorial demands by a policing of his violence, he is committed when an old lady dies after an attack; he kills again in prison; he submits to a new method that will destroy his criminal impulses; blameless, he is returned to a world that visits immediate retribution on him; he is, when an accidental propulsion to death does not destroy him, foisted upon society once more in his original state of sin.
What happens to Alex is terrible but it is worse for the reader.
Pub Date: Jan. 8, 1962
ISBN: 0393928098
Page Count: 357
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1962
SEEN & HEARD
Fans weary of King's recent unwieldy tomes can rest easy: his newest is slim, slick, and razor-keen. His first novel without supernatural elements outside of the Richard Bachman series, this psychological terror tale laced with pitch-black humor tells the nerve-jangling story of a best-selling author kidnapped and tortured by his "number one fan." King opens on a disorienting note as writer Paul Sheldon drifts awake to find himself in bed, his legs shattered. A beefy woman, 40-ish Annie Wilkes, appears and feeds him barbiturates. During the hazy next week, Paul learns that Annie, an ex-nurse, carried him from a car wreck to her isolated house, where she plans to keep him indefinitely. She's a spiteful misanthrope subject to catatonic fits, but worships Paul because he writes her favorite books, historical novels featuring the heroine "Misery." As Annie pumps him with drugs and reads the script of his latest novel, also saved from the wreck, Paul waits with growing apprehension—he killed off Misery in this new one. tn time, Annie rushes into the room, howling: she demands that Paul write a new novel resurrecting Misery just for her. He refuses until she threatens to withhold his drugs; so he begins the book (tantalizing chunks of which King seeds throughout this novel). Days later, when Annie goes to town, Paul, who's now in a wheelchair, escapes his locked room and finds a scrapbook with clippings of Annie's hobby: she's a mass-murderer. Up to here, King has gleefully slathered on the tension: now he slams on the shocks as Annie returns swinging an axe and chops off Paul's foot. Soon after, off comes his thumb; when a cop looking for Paul shows up, Annie lawnmowers his head. Burning for revenge, Paul finishes his novel, only to use the manuscript as a weapon against his captor in the ironic, ferocious climax. Although lacking the psychological richness of his best work, this nasty shard of a novel with its weird autobiographical implications probably will thrill and chill King's legion of fans. Note: the publisher plans an unprecedented first printing of one-million copies.
Pub Date: June 8, 1987
ISBN: 0451169522
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1987
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
