From Chinese-American writer Liu (Face, 1994, etc.), a riveting, bittersweet second novel about a marriage tested by race, culture, and history as an American woman and her Chinese husband navigate the treacherous waters of politics in the pre-Mao years. Loosely based on Liu's own grandparents' experience, the story begins in 1941 when Hope Newfield, living in Los Angeles, receives a three-year-old letter from her husband in China asking if she still has a place in her heart for him. The letter moves Hope to look back over the events that brought the couple together and tore them apart. They had met in 1906, when she was living in Oakland and tutoring Chinese students. Leong Po-yo, a new pupil, is the only son of a noble family and a follower of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Teacher and student are soon attracted to each other, and when Leong rescues Hope after the 1906 earthquake, they admit their love and decide to marry. They do so in Evanston, Wyoming, one of the few towns that allows ``mixed'' marriages, but they're quickly subject to racial slurs from both Americans and Chinese. Still, life is sweet, and the first of several children are born; but then, in 1911, revolution breaks out in China and Leong hurries back, followed shortly by Hope. From then on, their lives are shaped by Leong's political activities. Hope becomes a photographer and journalist; she and her children are shunned by both Chinese and European society. The marriage is further tested when China is pulled apart by civil war. Dispirited, Hope returns with her children to California in 1932, and though she goes back in 1942 in response to Leong's letter, she accepts that the two of them, victims of time and place, will always be ``separate and distinct.'' A moving tale of true love, besieged by politics and prejudice, that nonetheless survives the tumultuous times Liu so vividly and intelligently describes.
Pub Date: June 26, 1997
ISBN: 0-446-51987-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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