An absorbing exploration of mid-20th-century China through the story of a fractured family.
Kwei (A Concubine for the Family, 2012, etc.) chronicles a Chinese family through exile, homecoming, and Maoism in this historical novel.
At school in Syracuse, New York, in May 1945, Golden Bell feels insulated from the war in her native China. When she has a vision of her father with bloodstains on his robe, she knows he has been killed in the bombing of Chunking. In New York, Golden Bell is a member of a small, traumatized community of exiles and refugees, many of whom have lost relatives as a result of the Japanese occupation. Her younger sister, Silver Bell, ferried out of China by the family’s American tutor, witnessed the invasion of Hong Kong and the death of their half-sister. Even so, Silver Bell is acclimating to life in America better than Golden Bell, who finds Americans to be uninterested in Chinese culture and the Chinatown-dwelling Chinese to be insular and backward. She discovers love in a fellow exile: Yung Hsien-kung, the heir of a Shanghai textile fortune who shares her sense of being in-between. When the war ends, Golden Bell, her new fiance, and her sister return to China to help rebuild their country, but this transition, too, proves difficult. When a new, Chinese-born movement sweeps in from the countryside, bringing Communism and the Cultural Revolution, Golden Bell’s connections to tradition and family are tested even further. As Silver Bell wonders early in the novel: “With all the wars, who is Chinese anymore?” A sequel of sorts to A Concubine for the Family, this novel further analyzes China’s tumultuous shifts in the 20th century through the lens of one family. The writing is frequently striking, though the author’s attempts to teach the reader sometimes result in awkwardly expositional dialogue (“I’m just so angry that even though both China and Japan fought with the allies in World War I, the Paris Peace Conference awarded the German Concession in our Northeast to Japan”). Even so, the trials of Golden Bell and her family are compelling and, at times, heart-wrenching and leave the reader with a new perception of the forces that shaped modern China.
Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Tats Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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