It’s a shame that Kwok lets the end fall apart—rushing through a clichéd, melodramatic revelation that resolves way too...
From Kwok (Girl in Translation, 2010), another story about a plucky young Chinese-American woman whose hard work transports her out of poverty and hidebound traditions to find love and success.
At 22, having been fired for ineptness from numerous jobs, ABC (American Born Chinese) Charlie Wong works as a dishwasher in the restaurant where her dad is a noodle maker without peer. Unlike 11-year-old Lisa, Charlie’s younger sister, who is an ace student adored by all, Charlie didn't do well in school academically or socially. And unlike her long-dead mother, who was a ballerina with the Beijing Dance Academy before coming to America, Charlie seems completely lacking in grace except when practicing tai chi. But Charlie dreams of escaping the narrow confines of New York’s Chinatown, where she must live according to her father’s Old World rules and customs, which include a reliance on traditional Chinese medicine as practiced by his brother Henry; Lisa works after school in Uncle Henry's office as Charlie did before she proved too clumsy. Then Charlie answers a want ad and (a little too) miraculously is hired as a receptionist at Avery Studios, a respected uptown ballroom-dance studio. Although her receptionist skills are lacking, Charlie is in heaven around the dancers. Soon, the studio’s owner, Adrienne, recognizes Charlie's dormant talent as a dancer and, after the briefest training, hires her to teach the beginners class. Charlie is quickly caught up in learning a syllabus of dances and is even encouraged to enter a major competition. She’s also falling for not one, but two handsome men. But all is not well back in Chinatown, where Mr. Wong, who has no idea about his daughter’s secret uptown life, tries to find her a husband. And Lisa comes down with a mysterious ailment while preparing to take the entrance exam for prestigious Hunter High School.
It’s a shame that Kwok lets the end fall apart—rushing through a clichéd, melodramatic revelation that resolves way too easily—since much of Charlie’s Cinderella story, not to mention Charlie herself, is charming.Pub Date: June 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59463-200-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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