Richman flirts with some interesting issues of private priorities—family and love—versus the greater public good by showing...
Second-novelist Richman (The Mask of the Carver’s Son, 2000) pits political morality against personal loyalty as a Chilean exile in Sweden recovers slowly from being brutally kidnapped in retaliation by the Pinochet government.
Well-to-do Salome and working-class Octavio marry as students in Chile. Their lives revolve around poetry and romance until Octavio falls into a successful acting career that brings the couple and their children financial success but leaves Octavio spiritually empty. Then Pablo Neruda asks him to help Allende prepare his campaign for president. Apolitical Octavio can’t resist his idol Neruda, then finds himself drawn to Allende’s goals. Ironically, Salome, already impatient with what she considers her husband’s naiveté, is the one Pinochet’s men kidnap and torture to get even with Octavio after Allende’s fall. As soon she’s saved, thanks to Octavio’s intervention, the family receives asylum in Sweden. There, Salome begins therapy with Samuel, who specializes in post-traumatic stress syndrome. A French Jew whose parents never recovered from their survivors’ guilt after escaping to Peru during the war, Samuel is married to Kaija, whose Finnish parents sent her for adoption in Sweden to avoid their hardships during WWII. Samuel and Salome have a brief affair, which, for ethical reasons, Samuel ends, while Salome leaves Octavio and makes a life for herself. Samuel returns to Kaija, who has been distraught over her own secret, early menopause. Recommitted to Kaija, Samuel dies young of cancer. Twenty years later, Salome is approached to testify to the atrocities perpetrated against her and turns to Octavio for advice. Can she and Octavio rekindle their old love?
Richman flirts with some interesting issues of private priorities—family and love—versus the greater public good by showing both Salome and Octavio’s points of view, but ultimately the Nicholas Sparks–style sentimentality gets in the way.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2004
ISBN: 0-7434-7642-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
Neal Carey, the Smollett-loving specialist in finding people who don't want to be found (A Cool Breeze on the Underground, 1990), is hustled off to San Francisco to drag AWOL pesticide expert Robert Pendleton away from china doll Li Lan and back to paternal corporation AgriTech. But the fireworks that erupt after Neal's found the happy couple make him wonder whether gorgeous, talented painter Li Lan isn't actually a Communist agent who's trying to woo Pendleton back to her country; by the time Neal has been taken prisoner in the Walled City of Hong Kong, he's already gotten the Communists, the CIA, and AgriTech ready to burn him. And more trouble lies ahead, as shadowy patriarch Xao Xiyang and his treacherous underling Peng plot against each other to manipulate Neal into exposing Pendleton and Li Lan in a climax that still has room for a surprise or two. Despite Neal's inveterate habit of wising off in his mind's mouth, this is a sturdy two evenings' worth of entertainment.
Pub Date: March 18, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-07099-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1992
This genuine page-turner offers a whiff of white liberal self-congratulation that won’t hurt its appeal and probably spells...
The relationships between white middle-class women and their black maids in Jackson, Miss., circa 1962, reflect larger issues of racial upheaval in Mississippi-native Stockett’s ambitious first novel.
Still unmarried, to her mother’s dismay, recent Ole Miss graduate Skeeter returns to Jackson longing to be a serious writer. While playing bridge with her friends Hilly and Elizabeth, she asks Elizabeth’s seemingly docile maid Aibileen for housekeeping advice to fill the column she’s been hired to pen for a local paper. The two women begin what Skeeter considers a semi-friendship, but Aibileen, mourning her son’s recent death and devoted to Elizabeth’s neglected young daughter, is careful what she shares. Aibileen’s good friend Minnie, who works for Hilly’s increasingly senile mother, is less adept at playing the subservient game than Aibileen. When Hilly, an aggressively racist social climber, fires and then blackballs her for speaking too freely, Minnie’s audacious act of vengeance almost destroys her livelihood. Unlike oblivious Elizabeth and vicious Hilly, Skeeter is at the verge of enlightenment. Encouraged by a New York editor, she decides to write a book about the experience of black maids and enlists Aibileen’s help. For Skeeter the book is primarily a chance to prove herself as a writer. The stakes are much higher for the black women who put their lives on the line by telling their true stories. Although the exposé is published anonymously, the town’s social fabric is permanently torn. Stockett uses telling details to capture the era and does not shy from showing Skeeter’s dangerous naïveté. Skeeter’s narration is alive with complexity—her loyalty to her traditional Southern mother remains even after she learns why the beloved black maid who raised her has disappeared. In contrast, Stockett never truly gets inside Aibileen and Minnie’s heads (a risk the author acknowledges in her postscript). The scenes written in their voices verge on patronizing.
This genuine page-turner offers a whiff of white liberal self-congratulation that won’t hurt its appeal and probably spells big success.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-15534-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Amy Einhorn/Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2009
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