Didactic, often wearingly so, but interesting as an example of the kind of storytelling the powers that be don’t want heard.
A dystopian portrait of China in 2013, where the populace is both muzzled and soothed by state-controlled capitalism.
As the introduction to this intriguing if often plodding novel explains, the book is not officially sold in China, presumably because authorities find its criticism of Communist leadership too provocative. The novel has enjoyed success as samizdat, though, and like its obvious brethren, 1984 and Brave New World, it’s a grim fable that makes stark distinctions between oppressed and oppressor. The novel’s hero is Lao Chen, a middle-aged writer living in Beijing who’s enjoying the country’s economic boom. China has taken advantage of America’s economic collapse (Starbucks is now owned by a Chinese firm), and Lao is rich enough to spend his days as he pleases. Two acquaintances unsettle his comfy lifestyle: Fang Caodi, who insists that the state has erased the country’s collective memory of an entire crucial month, and Little Xi, whose online protests of the country’s post-Tiananmen crackdowns are deleted almost as fast as she can post them. Lao’s eventual political enlightenment is predictable, and convenient chess-piece characters are deployed to either defend the regime or sound alarms. Yet the insights aren’t always as simplistic as the characters; Little Xi’s son, an aspiring propagandist, stars in several bracing scenes that explore the philosophy of repression and groupthink. Unfortunately, the book’s narrative thrust stops cold in the novel’s epilogue, which consumes nearly a third of the book; in it, a Party functionary opines on China’s economic dominance, and how far its policy of thought control will go. In an endnote, the novel’s translator reports that Chinese readers find this section especially compelling, which may speak to how badly China is hurting for art that speaks truth to power.
Didactic, often wearingly so, but interesting as an example of the kind of storytelling the powers that be don’t want heard.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-385-53434-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2011
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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