Well conceived, and great stylistically—but too long and shapeless to work, whether as satire, thriller, or horror story.
Second-novelist Moloney (A Dry Spell, 1997) offers a rather-too-leisurely account of a haunted house and its successive families.
Having recently become a widow, Glenn Darnley returns to work as a realtor and takes on 362 Belisle, a new listing that’s suddenly come on the market. Newly renovated, the house is a roomy old Victorian in a great part of town—perfect for young families. There’s only one problem: It’s haunted. Glenn doesn’t dwell on that point, however, and she soon manages to sell it to Dan and Rebecca Mason, a young couple settling into their careers and looking for a place to nest. They dismiss—as mice—the weird noises coming from the attic, but the old woman they see wandering the stairs gives them something of a fright. Rebecca is stubborn, though, and refuses to move—until Dan is murdered by an unknown hand. She lets Glenn sell the place (at a decent profit) to Barbara Perkins, an unhappy divorcée with an eight-year-old son. Barbara and the boy soon begin to enjoy visits from a strange young girl who appears out of nowhere—and vanishes just as quickly. The two like her company so much that they both vanish, too. Glenn takes the listing once more and sells it to a drunken writer named Richie Bramley. Richie is a kind of superannuated frat boy, not the sort to give in too easily to simple worry, much less to panic and dread. He, too, though, begins to feel a tad uncomfortable when nooses appear, hanging from the ceiling beams. Instead of putting the house on the market again, however, Glenn decides to move into it herself. She’s spent so much time in the place, after all, that it feels like her own home—and, besides, she senses that the house is “full of life.”
Well conceived, and great stylistically—but too long and shapeless to work, whether as satire, thriller, or horror story.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7434-5662-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2002
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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