A fully drawn portrait of a city and a life, this novel will hold appeal for history buffs, lovers of literary fiction, and...
In British novelist Copleton's debut, family secrets and betrayals demand to be reckoned with, even after a world-shattering tragedy changes everything.
Grief-stricken, Amaterasu Takahashi and her husband, Kenzo, fled their hometown of Nagasaki, Japan, after losing their daughter and grandson to the atomic bomb. Almost 40 years later, widowed and friendless in Pennsylvania, Amaterasu's main companion is alcohol—until a disfigured man appears on her doorstep and claims to be her lost grandson, Hideo. His appearance sets off a firestorm of memories as Amaterasu reads a bundle of letters meant to prove their relation. Twenty-first–century readers will wonder why Amaterasu doesn't usher Hideo to the nearest doctor's office for a DNA test. Somewhat conveniently, the novel takes place in the 1980s, before such technology existed. As it is, Amaterasu's dilemma raises questions—what does it mean to accept a long-lost relative? Why and how is it worth it, when you can't know for sure? Amaterasu is hard but not bitter as she recounts her history, using calm and deliberate storytelling to draw full pictures of life before, during, and after the war. Copleton's perfectly paced hints and reveals of the Takahashi family secrets heighten the drama without causing the reader to feel manipulated. Each chapter begins by defining a thematically relevant Japanese word or concept, which adds cultural context to the novel without slowing the pace of the story or becoming overly didactic. Though Amaterasu's current life is defined by the bombing of Nagasaki, the novel is more than just a war story, taking readers back to her teen years and her life as a mother, when forbidden romances set the course for the future.
A fully drawn portrait of a city and a life, this novel will hold appeal for history buffs, lovers of literary fiction, and readers of high-drama romance.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-14-312825-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
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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