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
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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