More emetic than erotic.
If Michael Crichton had written The Thorn Birds, it might have sounded something like this debut thriller, which is crammed with medico-scientific jargon, wild sex and jabs at the Catholic Church.
Our hero is that bad-fiction staple, the hottie priest. Cute as a third-rate Caravaggio, Monsignor Dante Petrocchi-Bianchi is a former exorcist—natch—a multilingual, Vatican-savvy diplomat and an award-winning neuroscientist. That last credential is at least a new twist; perhaps the author was looking to make some use of her Ph.D. in molecular virology. Kenyon sets Dante on a clichéd mission to expose a New England pedophile priest. Masquerading as Father Nicolai’s replacement, the comely cleric hears confession from beauteous Bev Sloan, who’s having bad thoughts about offing her hubby. Nobel-tracked neurologist Conroy Sloan is in the throes of a seismic midlife crisis: He’s driving an antique Porsche and having sex with S&M-leaning, father-fixated lab assistant Leila. Dante tries to put the kibosh on their affair, but soon enough, he’s begun his own tryst with Bev. It’s a bad idea to make Doctor Sloan mad, since Conroy is road-testing a “glowing green virus” that produces symptoms similar to rabies. Frenzied plot twists ensue: Vengeful Bev stabs mocking, incorrigibly philandering Conroy; Dante ultimately makes Cardinal while remaining agonized over his shaky faith; readers find out that Leila had been abused; soap-opera and whodunit worlds collide. The author is certainly no slave to plausibility, and as for the prose, let two purple passages in the novel’s first three pages suffice: When Bev finds pink panties in her husband’s suitcase, “a caged ape rattled her ribs and her stomach snapped like an angry bull shark surging through chum.” And, in his Porsche with Leila, “testosterone or adrenaline or an opiate neurotransmitter crackled in [Conroy’s] spine, riding ionic potentials cresting down axons like surfing the Bonzai pipeline.”
More emetic than erotic.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-60164-002-1
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Künati
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2006
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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