Witless and lame debut.
An “ethnic chick-lit” entry about a southern California Indo-American woman, who turns out to be the reincarnation of the Hindu goddess Kali, reads like a dumbed-down episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Maya is 30, unmarried, unemployed, and the only one in her extended family who isn’t a doctor. A matchmaking aunt sets her up with Tahir, who flies in from Delhi, and, when Maya goes to the airport to tell him she refuses to marry a stranger, she’s kidnapped by Ram and Sanjay, taken to a motel room, and informed that the dark goddess Kali has returned in Maya’s body. Her task: to recognize evil and stop it. Maya drops by Barnes & Noble to research Kali. Result: “If I were Kali’s personal shopper I’d dress her in Dolce & Gabbana and advise leaving the necklace of freshly cut heads at home.” In sessions at Taco Bell, Ram tutors Maya in her duties, providing her with a ruby-encrusted sword and suggestions about how to take on her powers. Meanwhile, Tahir, who turns out to be a “hottie,” is also unwilling to accept the traditional arranged marriage. He and Maya are having a bumpy time of it (she’s always disappearing to take care of Kali business; he keeps flirting with her cousin Nadia). But Maya continues to find him appealing (at a party, her gynecologist aunt, seeing her gaze at Tahir, announces, “Maya’s aroused, I recognize the signs. . . . No doubt her inner labia have begun to swell and darken in color”). Finally Maya gets drunk at a bar, calls Tahir to pick her up, and they end up in bed together. Afterward, Maya informs us, “The goddess was pretty damn good in the sack.” Too bad that Maya is a vulgar, shallow, self-involved, unappealing narrator, given to puking and profanity when she’s not busy telling us about her Manolos, Tommy Bahama sandals, Armani jeans, and pink cashmere Ralph Lauren top.
Witless and lame debut.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-059036-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Avon/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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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