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Kings Row, by Henry Bellamann
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FIRST EDITION (1941).
- Sales Rank: #2051877 in Books
- Published on: 1942
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 674 pages
- Simon & Schuster, publisher
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
I read this book 50 years ago and enjoyed it. Now
By karen
I read this book 50 years ago and enjoyed it. Now, as an adult, I am reading it again and enjoying things that I missed the first time around, such as the great prose.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
A Lost Classic
By Robert Russin
"Spring came late in the year 1890, and the fullness of its burgeoning heightened the seasonal disturbance that made unquiet in the blood. "
So begins King's Row, Henry Bellamann's wonderful novel that I am calling a lost American classic. Despite being a critical and commercial success on its release in 1940, leading to a film version with Ronald Reagan two years later, King's Row and the rest of Bellamann's works are largely forgotten today.
This is unfortunate, as King's Row is a novel that should be appreciated both for the skill of its construction and the richness of its ideas. It's an important novel from a cultural and historical context, and there's nothing else quite like it.
At first, King's Row almost seems as if it could pass as just another slice of small town Americana, no more daring or cutting than a Norman Rockwell painting -- a safer and gentler Peyton Place. However, as the story unfolds, it reveals surprising depths of darkness, using beautiful prose to reveal some very ugly truths about the human mind and the civilization that it creates.
There is a lot going on here. Over the course of almost 700 pages, we are given premarital sex (lots of it), mental illness, atheism, incest, sexual abuse, a mad doctor, a sadistic surgeon, and probably most scandalous of all, a same sex kiss! You would think that in 1940 this book would have been banned faster than a gay porn version of Jesus of Nazareth, thus solidifying its permanent place in cultural memory (an amusing fact that book banners never seem to grasp), but somehow it seems to have slipped under the radar.
Bellamann succeeds in creating a town that is believable and compelling, with a large cast of characters that initially seem like quiet players in any American small town. Fairly early on we are given the jarring and incongruous image of a nearby insane asylum that looms over the town both literally and figuratively. It is here that young Parris Mitchell aspires to work as a doctor one day. Parris is coming of age at a time when the field of psychology was in its infancy, and the study of mental illness was a new and exciting (and controversial) field. This clash of science and technology against religion and tradition not only works as a brilliant way of allegorically juxtaposing the coming of age of a generation with the coming of age of an entire nation, but also serves as a fascinating bit of historical fiction.
Contrasting sharply to Parris's quiet and studious nature is his best (and, often, only) friend Drake McHugh, a wild and carefree spirit that balks at the suffocating and narrow-minded restrictions of the day. Drake is probably the most fully realized character in this story, combining a thoughtless vitality with a surprising amount of empathy and concern for others, something not always present in many of fiction's great lovable free spirits. Bellamann uses these characters as a clever and interesting tool to bring us into this world. Through Parris's Apollonian lens we get to see the ideas and thoughts of the day, and through Drake's decidedly Dionysian filter we see actions, and the consequences of balking convention in small town America.
To call this a coming of age tale is to place too narrow a restriction on what is actually a much larger story. Over the span of roughly two decades, we not only see characters grow and change, but we see a town -- and, indeed, a civilization -- going through a painful growth spurt. And, while some of it is expected (we can infer that the story of Parris and Cassandra, with their curiously Homeric names, will end tragically), occasionally there are sharp twists and turns that managed to surprise even me, a very jaded reader (I won't spoil anything, but there are some moments that would have made the likes of Poe and Lovecraft very proud).
This is a very philosophical novel, with some very large ideas and concepts written in prose that is elegant without being stuffy, and informative without being pedantic. There is both naivety and bitterness, beauty and tragedy, gentleness and brutality, and while it is clear that Bellamann himself was frustrated by much of small town society and its narrowness of scope, he presents a balanced enough viewpoint so that the novel doesn't fall into bleak condemnation of an entire culture. This was clearly the work of a brilliant mind, and if there is a flaw here it's that occasionally the characters all seem almost too smart, and have developed too deep an understanding of human nature based on their limited surroundings and experiences. Though, really, this a refreshing critique in light of how seldom one encounters this problem either in fiction or in real life.
Unfortunately, this novel has now gone out of print (I had to order mine from Amazon). If you can find a cheap copy of this book somewhere, I highly recommend picking it up. It's my hope that by talking about this novel as much as possible and (and by being annoying enough about it) that I can help generate enough interest in getting it out into the world once again. It is too beautiful, smart, sad, tragic, and compelling of a story to be lost to antiquity, and showcases a fascinating period of American history that I think we could learn a lot from by studying in 2013. Rating: A
@robrussin
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
This could be your town or mine!
By LindaT
I read Bellaman's books in reverse order -- my first one was PARRIS MITCHELL OF KING'S ROW -- that was the one we had at our home at the time. I read this one later. But order of reading notwithstanding, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, although some parts were disturbing. This is a realistic view of human nature in a small town (based on Fulton, Missouri, a location that could be considered both southern and midwestern).
This book is a series of interconnected events connecting a lot of characters and situations. There are many characters but most of it centers around Parris Mitchell and Drake McHugh. The book shows evil as well as good, and I'm guessing that at the time it was written, the sexual matters were quite shocking to read. But most readers will know that this sort of thing has been going on for a long time, even in the more so-called "hushed up" times when this book was written.
It's been compared to PEYTON PLACE, and I can understand why. Although the circumstances in each book were different, the character of Fullmer Green in this book is similar to Leslie Harrington in PEYTON PLACE in that they were both power-hungry people who wanted to dominate others. In fact, a good friend of mine, when she was describing PEYTON PLACE gave a description of Fullmer when she was trying to explain Leslie Harrington! (She got them mixed up)
Bellamann is a master of realism as well as good at creating characters real-life challenges. When I finished reading this book, I felt like I could find my way around the town of King's Row! Above all, he shows that King's Row, like any town, is probably neither good nor bad; it's a town; a place, and the people determine what it is. When you finish the book, you get the idea that the author still loves the town -- it's his own.
This book will grab your attention, for sure!
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