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The Story of Six According to Claire

Name: The Story of Six According to Claire
Author: T H Building
ISBN: 978-1492958796

by T H Building ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 11, 2013

An ultimately unsuccessful attempt to eroticize abuse.

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An erotically charged novel with disturbing abuse at its center.

Students who fail their high school studies are sent to Repeater’s College, where they are taught discipline and respect via a deeply visceral method: caning. Any violation of school rules and it’s off to the Head Office to receive either four or six of “the best,” hardest, most precisely placed strokes of the buttocks, administered with a cane. Teenage Claire almost made it through her time at Repeater’s without a caning, but when she’s caught with a cigarette, it’s off to the office. She expects pain and terror—not the sexual feelings that arise in anticipation of the beating and during the beating itself. What awakens in Claire is, according to author Building, a sick, corrupt version of sexuality that can never be divorced from abuse. Claire discovers that only in her sexual explorations with Mark, another student who has been recently beaten, can she relieve her emotional and physical feelings of desire and confusion. The reader begins to see the extent of the damage done to these students as their friendships and other relationships are poisoned by fear and manipulation. Building attempts to turn a horrifying practice and a chronicle of psychological harm into erotic fiction for adults, even going so far as to describe both the beatings and sexual acts in similarly graphic detail. The problem with this endeavor is that, despite Building’s many disclaimers, readers are placed in the position of the sadistic tormentors and encouraged to draw erotic pleasure from descriptions of abuse. Building tries to distinguish BDSM—in which consenting partners agree on specific levels of pain administration and acceptance—from the book’s definition of abuse, in which there is absolutely no consent and the victims are used for the perpetrator’s own sexual satisfaction. But an unsettling confusion emerges when Building tries to arouse readers with descriptions of acts—some of which are rather poorly written; “female sex parts” appears a number of times—that, though they might turn on the characters, shouldn’t titillate readers.

An ultimately unsuccessful attempt to eroticize abuse.

Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2013

ISBN: 978-1492958796

Page Count: 274

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2013

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).