Blend Tristram Shandy with, say, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and you have something of the spirit of this spirited tale: a...
I’m a boy, but my mother won’t admit it: an entertaining yet philosophically inclined stroll along some decidedly little-visited lanes and mews in Georgian England.
It makes sense, at least of a sort, that British musician Stace—whose nom de guitare is John Wesley Harding—should pick up a tip from Pete Townshend, and perhaps Mick Jagger, about gender-bending and its associated dysfunctions and malfunctions and then let the story roll. That story is, superficially, simple: a youngish English lord named, with all due symbolism, Geoffrey Loveall, is out on an errand that takes him through the back streets of London. Though he “had no curiosity about his surroundings,” Loveall “knew to keep half an eye on the passing world to soothe the tottering of his carriage,” and with that half-eye open finds an abandoned baby. His mother, the arch Lady Loveall, is a little suspicious of the discovery: “Have you read this baby into being? Found it in the library? Did you bring it to life in your dollhouse? I cannot believe for a moment that you have created it in a natural way.” Ah, natural ways just won’t do in aristocratic circles, and with the help of a mysterious governess, the foundling boy is on his way to being raised as a girl to meet a perceived gap in the makeup of the Loveall household. Adventures and misadventures ensue, and Stace pulls off a neat trick by shifting narrators in midstream, keeping the reader guessing and on his (or, dare we say, her) toes as Lady Rose Loveall does his thing. Stace’s abundant cleverness sometimes slips into preciousness, but the narrative is full of surprises, mixing up an utterly modern—and even postmodern—story of sexual awakening and self-discovery with a quirky but believable portrait of life, at least of a kind, in early modern England, all very well done.
Blend Tristram Shandy with, say, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and you have something of the spirit of this spirited tale: a most promising debut.Pub Date: April 11, 2005
ISBN: 0-316-83034-8
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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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