Book #1 (of four) of King's celebrated megabucks publishing contract—and it's King at his effusive near-best, with a long, ultra-violent, suspenseful story of a best-selling writer whose pseudonym comes to life and goes on a murderous rampage. As in Misery, King again fantasizes from his own writerly experience, creating as his hero Maine author Thad Beaumont—who, in addition to literary novels under his own name, has written four grisly best-sellers under the pen name of George Stark. Unlike King's own Richard Bachman pseudonym, though—to whom King claims "indebtedness" here, and who was laid to rest after exposure by a resourceful reporter—Stark takes on malignant flesh after Thad (staving off threatened exposure) kills him off by going public in People magazine. Rising from his mock grave pictured in the People spread, Stark beats to death a local Maine man—and draws the ire of subsidiary hero Sheriff Alan Pang-born. When Stark's fingerprints turn out to match Thad's, the writer becomes the law-man's prime suspect—until Stark's graphically detailed blood-riot in Manhattan, where he kills Thad's literary agent and everyone associated with his "death," convinces Pang-born that Thad is innocent. King enriches this mayhem with his usual psychological soundings (are the now telepathically linked Stark and Thad truly two halves of one whole?) and occult symbolism (in an effective borrowing from The Birds, millions of sparrows, "psychopomps," herald Stark's moves). But the strong accent here is on violent action, with matters reaching a ripping climax as Stark kidnaps Thad's family to force Thad to help him write one last novel—the writing of which will allow the crazed Stark, now decaying, to suck up Thad's life force. A potent, engrossing blend of occult and slasher horror, not as fully riveting or grandly ironic as Misery, but without the pomposities of much other recent King—It; The Tommy-knockers—and certainly slick and scary enough to make it the book to beat on the fall lists.
Pub Date: Oct. 23, 1989
ISBN: 0451167317
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1989
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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