Even though Ferrell’s exploration of identity comes up short, that’s a small blemish on this artfully barbed entertainment.
He’s an accident-prone amnesiac, the lead, but his inability to feel pain brings him celebrity; Ferrell’s eye-catching debut is a mordant take on contemporary culture.
Out of the sandstorm he stumbles, this skinny young man with the bleeding head wound, into some circus tents near the Texas highway. There’s no sign of a wreck; what happened is a mystery, for the guy has lost his memory. “I’m numb,” he says. No pain for Numb, his new name, and some gain for Mr. Tilly, sleazy owner of this bankrupt circus; Numb becomes their star attraction, hammering nails into himself. Next step: some time in the lion’s cage. The one person concerned for his welfare is Mal, the fire-eating machete juggler. Numb survives, with deep claw marks in his thigh, and he and Mal travel to New York, where Mal has Numb continue his lucrative act. Mal is variously friend, exploiter and rival; that last role leads to his spectacular demise. Soon Numb acquires a savvy talent agent who hooks him up (“cross-promotion”) with the Japanese Hiko, a hot downtown sculptor. She’s blind; doing his casts, she’s fascinated by his scarred skin texture. They become lovers (Hiko’s initiative); Numb moves in with her. The buzz grows. Hiko has a splashy opening; Numb does TV commercials and is on Dave. Though it lacks the exhilarating strangeness of the circus, this world of surfaces is a perfect fit for a freak without a past; that past becomes irrelevant as Numb’s actions define his character. While drawn to danger, he’s basically passive, and stupidly self-destructive, cheating on Hiko with a beautiful model he’s been warned will use and discard him. Only near the end, in Los Angeles, where he’s set to star in his life story (“a reality formula”), does he rebel against his handlers and the sleaze they’re peddling.
Even though Ferrell’s exploration of identity comes up short, that’s a small blemish on this artfully barbed entertainment.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-194650-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
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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