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THE BROKEN PLACES

Name: THE BROKEN PLACES
Author: Susan Perabo
ISBN: 0-684-86234-4

by Susan Perabo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 8, 2001

A villainless media-bashing feel-gooder that reads like a pitch to Ron Howard, who unfortunately already did firemen.

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A lukewarm first novel from Perabo (stories: Who I Was Supposed to Be, 1999) that tries to capture and criticize small-town America, in a plot-heavy story of a firefighter vaulted into fame by catastrophe.

Pennsylvania’s version of the Columbine scoundrels have made a mess: a small explosive device has leveled the home of one of the relatives of swastika-tattooed roustabout Ian Finch, who becomes trapped in the rubble. The rescue effort tests the mettle of Casey’s fire-department captain, Sonny Tucker, a fireman’s fireman whose idyllic life includes his son (the protagonist), 12-year-old Paul, who watches first as his father becomes trapped under the house with Finch, then as both emerge with the chilling tale that Sonny chopped off Finch’s foot to save him. Paul learns of courage and manhood as his father becomes a hero and the TV people arrive to turn it all into a miniseries. But the plot doesn’t quite get it: though Perabo’s prose is mostly bland and colorless, a disembodied intelligence descends occasionally to provide lyric insight. It’s as much out of place as it is refreshing. And this is how we are told that the fictional media’s version of the rescue is “both familiar and affirming in days when so little else is, constructed from the very myths we most long to believe.” All well and good—but then it turns out that Sonny isn’t himself anymore. His new fascination with the Finch boy, who is otherwise universally disliked, becomes the tension fulcrum, and the mystery of what really happened under the house keeps the story moving. Problem is, Perabo’s message never transcends itself. She wants to challenge the stereotypes created by the media, but she simply replaces them with other stereotypes: Finch turns out to be more than a Nazi thug; he’s the standard-issue misunderstood rebel.

A villainless media-bashing feel-gooder that reads like a pitch to Ron Howard, who unfortunately already did firemen.

Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2001

ISBN: 0-684-86234-4

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FALL OF LISA BELLOW
by Susan Perabo

- BOOK REVIEW
WHY THEY RUN THE WAY THEY DO
by Susan Perabo

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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.