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REQUIEM BY FIRE

Name: REQUIEM BY FIRE
Author: Wayne Caldwell
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6344-4

by Wayne Caldwell ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 2, 2010

Another tale of community and transition from a writer to watch.

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The author returns to Cataloochee (2007).

In his debut, Caldwell traced the history of a homesteading community in the Appalachians from the 1830s to the 1930s, when the U.S. government bought—or, depending on how you look at it, seized—this land to create the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Now, Caldwell picks up his tale more or less where he left off, following the disparate paths of residents who leave, those who stay and the newcomers drawn by the park. Oliver Babcock Jr., the dandyish lawyer who emerged as an unlikely hero in the first novel, returns on behalf of the Parks Commission, trying to convince people who have grown to trust him to sell their property. Similarly, Cataloochee native Jim Hawkins attempts to ease his one-time neighbors into a new life of federal restrictions as the park’s warden. Then there’s Silas Wright, a farmer who stubbornly decides to neither sell out nor leave. There’s drama here—from domestic strife in the Hawkins household to arson—but this story is not quite as compelling as Cataloochee, and Caldwell occasionally succumbs to some of the temptations he avoided in his first outing. There are, for example, several speeches, monologues that strain the reader’s credulity and exude a rather clunky sentimentality. Southerners, dirt farmers, individuals who favor mules to motorcars: Characters such as these have been so thoroughly romanticized and caricatured that it’s almost impossible to render them as real people, and doing just that was one of Caldwell’s greatest achievements in Cataloochee. That novel was also graced by a sort of organic wholeness that was a perfect match for its subject, and Caldwell does not accomplish that again. Nevertheless, to say that this novel is not quite as good as its predecessor is hardly an insult.

Another tale of community and transition from a writer to watch.

Pub Date: March 2, 2010

ISBN: 978-1-4000-6344-4

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2010

Categories:

HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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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

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NEVER FLINCH
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YOU LIKE IT DARKER
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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.