Marvelous fiction. Ha Jin’s work is getting better and better.
The cultural and economic consequences of capitalism vs. communism are dramatized in unforgettably human terms in this brilliant third collection of 12 stories (Under the Red Flag, 1997, etc.) by the Chinese-American author (Waiting, a 1999 National Book Award winner).
Ha Jin is a master of cunningly shaped anecdotal tales, like “A Bad Joke,” in which a careless remark misinterpreted as criticism of Chairman Deng Xiaoping earns two naïve peasants prison terms, and the stunning “Saboteur,” about a dedicated Marxist whose arrest on a trumped-up charge leads him to take a hideous revenge. His mastery of mixed tones and narrative surprises is also showcased in the unusual title story, about a young husband’s apprehension for the supposedly Western-inspired “crime” of homosexuality (as observed by his initially sympathetic, sexually befuddled, eventually disapproving father-in-law), and the double-edged “A Tiger-Fighter is Hard to Find,” which deftly satirizes both the warrior’s mentality and the issue of property (in this case, a tranquilized, though far from tranquil, 300-pound Siberian tiger). Of several stories dominated by pointed East-West contrasts, the most plaintive are “The Woman from New York,” who fails to return from work and study abroad to a culture that rejects her as corrupted by “foreign influence,” and “In the Kindergarten,” a delicate portrayal of a young girl’s introduction to communal living in the form of day school. More ambitious exposures of lives altered by politics appear in “An Official Reply,” about a charismatic teacher whose rise in the Party offends his former admiring student, and “After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town,” about a crisis created by an American fast-food franchise that prospers in China. Even better is the Chekhovian “Alive,” which deposits the amnesiac survivor of an earthquake in a satisfying “new life”—a life that he’ll never reconcile with his former one.
Marvelous fiction. Ha Jin’s work is getting better and better.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-42067-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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