A chilling ghost story that sets the innocence of childhood against the horrors of domestic abuse.
A young girl with an eerie doll, a ghost hunter with a tragic past, and a mother-daughter team of psychics cross paths in this debut horror novel.
As World War II approaches, 7-year-old Affinity Bell lives an isolated life in a Virginia mansion with her father, Taylor, a wealthy weapons manufacturer with “a knack for all things business, and for all things underhanded and treacherous,” and her beautiful but ineffectual mother Monica. An obsessive woodworker, Taylor is determined to turn his own wife into “a honed and polished dowel” by beating her unmercifully, and Affinity seems to retreat into a fantasy world with Mr. Moppet, a doll with strange powers that alternately hurts and protects her—although it ultimately can’t prevent horror from engulfing her life. Three decades later, in 1974, Tanner Dann, a young Californian writing a book about ghosts, arrives in Virginia, seeking to uncover the secrets of Bell House. He enlists the aid of Linda Cookmeyer, an attractive older psychic, with whom he has a romantic spark. Along with Linda’s even more sensitive daughter, Claire, the trio finds that there’s much more evil in Bell House than a simple haunting, and that each of them will be called upon to face their greatest fears and vulnerabilities. Wilson does a skillful job of weaving the complex fabric of his story, setting a captivating tone from the beginning with Affinity’s unnerving blend of innocence and calculation. The leap forward in time to the 1970s is equally well-managed, and the relationship between the pragmatic Linda and the quixotic Tanner provides a degree of grounding to the fantastic narrative. Readers might wish that this aspect of the story were a little better developed, as things falter a bit with the introduction of archetypal supernatural elements. However, Wilson manages to keep the suspense taut to the end, and all the disparate plot threads come together nicely.
A chilling ghost story that sets the innocence of childhood against the horrors of domestic abuse.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-942981-95-4
Page Count: 292
Publisher: W & B Publishers
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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