FRIDA’S BED

Name: FRIDA’S BED
Author: Slavenka Drakulić
ISBN: 978-0-14-311415-4

by Slavenka Drakulić & translated by Christina P. Zoric ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2008

Elegant portrait of an artist that grants Kahlo a vulnerability and complexity often missing from the kitschy images of her...

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The final days of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, as imagined by the Croatian-born author (They Would Never Hurt a Fly, 2004, etc.).

Confined to her bed and suffering from pneumonia, among other ailments, Frida has ample time to contemplate her role in the world just as she mentally readies herself to leave it. The frail 47-year-old, who is also recovering from the amputation of her right leg, ruminates on her remarkable experiences as both an artist and as the beautiful, exotic wife to famous muralist Diego Rivera (here called simply “the Maestro”). It is her lifetime of physical suffering, though, that in this book defines her most. A childhood bout of polio withers her leg; a gruesome streetcar accident nearly kills her as a teen; and chronic back pain makes even sitting still and painting a defiant act of self-control and will. Also explored are the well-known, gossipy events of her biography, including her husband’s chronic womanizing. He betrays her with her healthy younger sister Kity, an act that cuts especially deep, even as Frida outwardly forgives them both. An affair with exiled Leon Trotsky gives her insight in what it feels like to be the other woman for a change, and it suggests that Frida’s longtime flirtation with communism has less to do with ideology than it does with getting closer to her husband. But it is pain and a desire to rise above her physical body that she returns to again and again, even as she realizes that her finest work would not have been possible without it. Seemingly helpless at the end, she is left to ultimately decide how much of a role to have in her own demise. This often-downbeat work includes ample stream-of-consciousness musings and brief examinations of Kahlo’s art, and how it was influenced by her life.

Elegant portrait of an artist that grants Kahlo a vulnerability and complexity often missing from the kitschy images of her that abound today.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-14-311415-4

Page Count: 164

Publisher: Penguin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
CAFÉ EUROPA REVISITED
by Slavenka Drakulić

- BOOK REVIEW
A GUIDED TOUR THROUGH THE MUSEUM OF COMMUNISM
by Slavenka Drakulić

- BOOK REVIEW
THEY WOULD NEVER HURT A FLY
by Slavenka Drakulić

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CARRIE

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 8, 1974

King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
OTHER WORLDS THAN THESE
by Stephen King & Peter Straub

- BOOK REVIEW
NEVER FLINCH
by Stephen King

- BOOK REVIEW
YOU LIKE IT DARKER
by Stephen King

- PERSPECTIVES
Appreciations: Carrie Turns 40

- SEEN & HEARD
Stephen King Used ‘Carrie’ Advance To Support Mom

- BOOK TO SCREEN
New ‘Carrie’ Series in the Works at Amazon

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.