A preposterous but at moments oddly beguiling love story blessed with very good shabby-chic taste.
" 'Tis wutherin' weather," comments the implausible manservant in Wyler's debut, giving the reader fair warning of this wispy, occasionally farcical reinterpretation of the Brontë family legend and classic.
With its cover announcing "a novel of Wuthering Heights," this offbeat, sometimes-surreal romance makes no secret of its intentions, especially when introducing its hero, Meadowscarp Macleod. "You know a meadow is a heath and a scarp is a cliff. Do you see?" asks Aunt Alice. But American clothes designer Eleanor Abbott doesn't immediately see, being preoccupied with ghosts; the heartbreaking unfaithfulness of her too-good-to-be-true boyfriend-since-schooldays, Miles; and the imminent death of Alice, whose passing means Trent Hall in Yorkshire will be Eleanor's. Her female ancestors are reputed to have a history/curse of making the wrong choice when deciding between two competing lovers. Could Eleanor herself be about to make a mistake, opting between leather-and-heather scented Meadowscarp and smooth Miles? Wyler's Yorkshire is a peculiarly unreal place, heavily detailed with furnishing fabrics—velvet and cashmere in particular—and where the locals speak a bizarre dialect. There is much striding on the moors. Not only does the ghost of Emily Brontë direct Eleanor to a cache of hidden letters contradicting literary scholarship by proving that the Victorian author knew all about passion, but Wyler goes a step further, granting her heroine a permanent place in the Brontë lineage, as well as enough self-knowledge to make the right choice.
A preposterous but at moments oddly beguiling love story blessed with very good shabby-chic taste.Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59463-236-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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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