A worthwhile read despite a simplification that might put some readers off.
Novelist Milton’s (The Godmother, 2018, etc.) political and ideological thriller is “ripped from the headlines” and should come with a trigger warning for Trump followers.
The book starts off with a bang, literally. Elsa Romero and Karl Reinholdt are facing off at a demonstration for immigrants’ rights. Her sign reads “LOVE WILL PREVAIL”; his, “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.” A shot rings out, and the gun lands at Karl’s feet. Instinctively he picks it up. But Elsa knows that Karl didn’t fire the fatal shot and tells the police so. Thus begins what may be called “The Salvation of Karl Reinholdt.” Karl fell in with the “alt-right” after the factory that supported the town of Freiburg, Ohio, shut down. He lost his job there, and his parents saw their pensions halved. Enraged and depressed, he was eventually persuaded to blame immigrants. Elsa and her friend and mentor, Sister Solana, are both immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Elsa takes Karl in. They begin to trust one another, and ever so slowly, Elsa deprograms him, so to speak. Let it be said that Milton’s heart is in the right place. We are happy to cheer Elsa and Karl on. But it’s rather clear from the start that Karl will be saved, that he is at heart a decent guy and not a racist. Rather, he is an economically displaced white guy desperate to lay blame for how the traditional life he trusted could have come crashing down this way. In fact, one could argue that Milton has made up too easy a case: Karl isn’t the scary true believer who will eventually blow up a mosque or torch a black church. And the scary confrontation with the real killer has a whiff of deus ex machina about it. But these quibbles aside, Milton does a conscientious job of dramatizing the arguments, drawing Elsa and Karl as real people in conflict, and nicely pacing the conversion.
A worthwhile read despite a simplification that might put some readers off.Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73206-342-6
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Nepperhan Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King's newest is a gargantuan summer sausage, at 1144 pages his largest yet, and is made of the same spiceless grindings as ever: banal characters spewing sawdust dialogue as they blunder about his dark butcher shop. The horror this time out is from beyond the universe, a kind of impossible-to-define malevolence that has holed up in the sewers under the New England town of Derry. The It sustains itself by feeding on fear-charged human meat—mainly children. To achieve the maximum saturation of adrenalin in its victims, It presents itself sometimes as an adorable, balloon-bearing clown which then turns into the most horrible personal vision that the victims can fear. The novel's most lovingly drawn settings are the endless, lightless, muck-filled sewage tunnels into which it draws its victims. Can an entire city—like Derry—be haunted? King asks. Say, by some supergigantic, extragalactic, pregnant spider that now lives in the sewers under the waterworks and sends its evil mind up through the bathtub drain, or any drain, for its victims? In 1741, everyone in Derry township just disappeared—no bones, no bodies—and every 27 years since then something catastrophic has happened in Derry. In 1930, 170 children disappeared. The Horror behind the horrors, though, was first discovered some 27 years ago (in 1958, when Derry was in the grip of a murder spree) by a band of seven fear-ridden children known as the Losers, who entered the drains in search of It. And It they found, behind a tiny door like the one into Alice's garden. But what they found was so horrible that they soon began forgetting it. Now, in 1985, these children are a horror novelist, an accountant, a disc jockey, an architect, a dress designer, the owner of a Manhattan limousine service, and the unofficial Derry town historian. During their reunion, the Losers again face the cyclical rebirth of the town's haunting, which again launches them into the drains. This time they meet It's many projections (as an enormous, tentacled, throbbing eyeball, as a kind of pterodactyl, etc.) before going through the small door one last time to meet. . .Mama Spider! The King of the Pulps smiles and shuffles as he punches out his vulgarian allegory, but he too often sounds bored, as if whipping himself on with his favorite Kirin beer for zip.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1986
ISBN: 0451169514
Page Count: 1110
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1986
Another ugly assignment for secret agent James Bond begins with the bridge game in which he is asked to take Hugo Drax, multi-millionaire, national hero, and cheat- Drax whose new rocket, the Moonraker, is to be Britain's assurance against an atomic threat. After the killing of the security officer at the Moonraker installation, Bond takes his place, and with lovely Gala Brand- also an agent, spots the dreadful deception which has been planned. For those who liked Casino Royale and Live and Let Live, this is again a violent and virulent type of espionage entertainment.
Pub Date: Sept. 13, 1955
ISBN: 0142002062
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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