From the author of last year's Red Azalea—a highly praised memoir of growing up during the Cultural Revolution—comes a bittersweet story as much about love as about the malignant legacy of Maoist China. Twenty-nine-year-old Zebra Wong begins her story in 1982, ``a year depression swam through the veins of the nation.'' The Cultural Revolution is over, Mao is dead, and China is slowly changing, but individual lives are still subject to bureaucratic whim and control. Zebra and her classmates, temporarily excused from regular factory work, are attending a special work-study English program in Shanghai, Zebra's hometown. Like Zebra, her fellow students had worshipped Mao, spent their adolescence learning his teachings, and then worked in remote agricultural regions during the 1970's. Now ``former'' revolutionaries, they bitterly realize that ``our youth had faded without a trace...[as] we learned to distrust...acted like heartless robots, our souls wrapped in darkness.'' But Katherine, a young American in Shanghai to teach English while she completes her dissertation, soon changes their attitudes and their lives with her gaiety and openness- -changes that will eventually harm both herself and her students because, as she's warned, ``no one tells the truth here. You have to figure out where to find the truth.'' Zebra, who'd been raped by the local party chief while performing forced labor in the countryside, is instantly fascinated by Katherine's beauty and stories of American life. And though Zebra has a loveless affair with a fellow student, who will cynically marry an official's daughter to get a scholarship to go abroad, she finds herself increasingly in love with Katherine. Eventually, though, Katherine's incautious spontaneity, her political naãvetÇ, and others' jealous betrayals lead to her deportation—as well as to a harsh penalty for Zebra ended only by changing politics and some loyal friends end. Lyrical prose with a distinct Chinese flavor makes Min's first novel—and its times—even more poignant and resonant.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-57322-005-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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