An unpredictable, improbable exploration of the trials and tribulations of marijuana trafficking.
Young love is overtaken by the excitement of the drug trade in this joint effort by the pseudonymous Holy Ghost Writer and Barrameda (9/11: Terrorists’ Descent into Jahannam, 2015, etc.).
When Sarah and Davey meet as 11-year-olds in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, it seems as if the two paintings there—Thomas Lawrence’s Pinkie (1794) and Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy (1779)—serve as an allegory for their own lives: two people, worlds apart yet meant to be together. Indeed, Sarah and Davey spend years circling each other without actually meeting again. Davey (now “David”) becomes a charismatic, thrill-seeking college student with a love for pranks, and Sarah tackles a writing career. Discouraged by her failures as a novelist, she turns to nonfiction and goes undercover as a marijuana dealer in order to write an article. To her surprise, she finds more success as a criminal than she ever has as a writer. Her operation is growing by the minute, and she ends up unwittingly using David to launder her money. In Mexico, they finally find each other again, but dire circumstances may cut their reunion short. Readers will get caught up in the anticipation of Sarah and David’s eventual meeting and each close call they have. However, much of the charm of the novel’s first half gets lost after the topic of marijuana is introduced. The epic romance seems to transform into a parable about marijuana’s virtues, the evils of the drug war, and the confining nature of a non-bohemian lifestyle. The authors devote paragraphs to discussing the benefits of marijuana and the evils of the pharmaceutical industry, bemoaning the “drudgery of well-paid, steady work,” and portraying the international legal system as a web of intrigue and bribery. Even readers who support marijuana legalization may find it hard to sympathize with the characters, and their journeys into crime come off as unrealistic; Sarah’s transition from frustrated novelist to top-tier drug dealer is lightning-fast, and David becomes an expert at money laundering seemingly instantly.
An unpredictable, improbable exploration of the trials and tribulations of marijuana trafficking.Pub Date: May 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-44381-1
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Illuminated Publications
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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