In a world with increasingly flexible borders, Teo’s fine novel about traditions lost, found and reshaped resonates beyond...
Set in contemporary Australia, Teo’s second novel (Love and Vertigo, not reviewed) is a beautifully crafted story of immigrant alienation, splintered families and the saving grace of friendship.
In the suburbs of Sydney, Tien Ho, Nigel “Gibbo” Gibson and Justin Cheong have been friends since childhood, brought together by a kind of misfit camaraderie and ethnic bonding (Gibbo uselessly insists he’s part Chinese), though culturally they couldn’t be more dissimilar. Justin’s parents are affluent Singaporeans, his father a doctor, his mother the cheerful master of their sanitary house (much is covered in plastic), and the two have high hopes for their son’s future. At a piano lesson, he befriends Gibbo, the flabby, teary-eyed son of a tough Aussie dad and English mum, both dumbfounded by their unimpressive offspring. The two boys are later joined by Tien at school, half Vietnamese, half African-American, the product of her mother Linh’s wartime romance. For most of her childhood,Tien is raised by aunts and uncles—they were able to escape with her to Australia while Lihn was mysteriously left behind. She regards prim Mrs. Gibson as the supreme maternal surrogate until Lihn arrives in Australia, and Tien is suddenly caught between two worlds. This uneasy space of compromise and disconnection is occupied by all three friends: Justin is gay and unable to reconcile his sexuality with the expectations of his family; Tien longs for a kind of assimilated Australian life that will erase the guilt she has for hating her traditional mother; and ironically, sad Gibbo longs for the kind of attention found in Asian families. The three move into adulthood, where they grapple with the loneliness of a deliberately forged identity, a territory that has little room for family or old friends. The book embodies the immigrant experience (even venturing into Lihn’s past, from her childhood in Vietnam to her eventual middle-aged escape to dull suburbia) and never loses its emotional intimacy.
In a world with increasingly flexible borders, Teo’s fine novel about traditions lost, found and reshaped resonates beyond the Australian experience.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-56947-440-0
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2006
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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