PIPE DREAM

Name: PIPE DREAM
Author: Solomon Jones
ISBN: 0-375-75660-4

by Solomon Jones ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 31, 2001

Despite occasional descents into melodrama, Pipe Dream is the work of a talented newcomer passionate about his material. An...

bookshelf

A staff writer for Philadelphia Weekly debuts with a searing tale of betrayals, self-betrayals, wasted lives—and addiction.

The place is Philadelphia, though the setting could be any big city. Everett Jackson (street name: Black), a young African-American awaiting trial for murder, tells the bulk of his story in one long flashback. Black’s a “piper”—a crack-cocaine addict—as is his best friend Leroy. That is, they would be best friends if the all-controlling need for the hit didn’t make romantic nonsense out of so humanly natural a concept. As usual, Black and Leroy are broke on this particular night. In order to score, they have to run some kind of scam, which, in its typical inefficiency, is what lands them in the wrong place at the wrong time—in a certain crack house where someone has just been murdered. It turns out to be a very important someone: the city councilman who heads the Police Civilian Review Board. He’s been lured to his death because a couple of highly placed cops need to discredit him before he can blow the whistle on the corruption that’s made them rich. The cops also need scapegoats, a role for which both Black and Leroy, friendless and powerless, seem tailor-made. An all-out manhunt ensues, leading the beset pipers to go underground. Expert at wriggling and squirming, they make it seem for a while as if they might escape—but they don’t, and they can’t. The thing about pipers is that way down deep they know they don’t deserve to. Violence leads to bloodshed and, paradoxically, to isolated patches of something like nobility. In the end, Black’s desperate battle against the system, and his own inner demons produces an unsought and affecting redemption.

Despite occasional descents into melodrama, Pipe Dream is the work of a talented newcomer passionate about his material. An impressive debut—and a writer to watch.

Pub Date: July 31, 2001

ISBN: 0-375-75660-4

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
TEN LIVES, TEN DEMANDS
by Solomon Jones

- BOOK REVIEW
THE DEAD MAN'S WIFE
by Solomon Jones

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GRAVEDIGGER'S BALL
by Solomon Jones

bookshelf

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...

bookshelf

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

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

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.