by Audrey Mei ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 27, 2016
Despite distracting exposition, this generation-spanning novel brings Chinese life and global history alive.
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
Mei’s debut novel charts the aspirations of a Chinese family against the backdrop of wars and political shifts.
Tita Pasang, known in life as socialite Ahn Na in 1940s Shanghai, comes back as a fairy to help Trixi, the Kuo family’s “last hope.” The action switches from 2015 Germany to Shanghai, Pudong District, 1938, when the goals of Kuo Mingxun, Ahn Na’s brother, inspire his wife, Chun-xiang, to administer herbs to their 8-year-old son, Edwin, to help him be a better student. The potion works. Edwin wakes and is ready to take on his father’s wish to “know more than just the longtang, more than just China.” By finding work aboard supply and cargo vessels, Edwin travels as far west as France but mostly docks at ports along the eastern Pacific Ocean. He sees the effects of World War II and the bombing of Nagasaki. After a short imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution, he makes a life aboard a domestic Chinese cargo ship he captains. He raises his young sons, First Brother and Little Two, onboard while continuing to hope he will be reunited with his wife, Ling-hua. The narrative focuses briefly on the individual lives of Ahn Na, Little Two, and Trixi. Eventually, Edwin regains what he thought was lost by leaving what he most cherishes. The real tension of the novel begins when Edwin goes to sleep, a well-executed plot shift, with the action toggling between his mother’s mind and his dreams. His perceptions and emotions are the beating heart of the novel: “large butterflies of blood are dried around Auntie Cloud’s head and arms.” The framing exposition is entertaining but static, and key dramatic events are often told rather than shown. The sections devoted to Ahn Na, Little Two, and Trixi are as vividly written as much of the novel; however, these sections seem thin after the fullness and jewellike quality of Edwin’s complete and multifaceted tale.
Despite distracting exposition, this generation-spanning novel brings Chinese life and global history alive.Pub Date: July 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5348-2130-9
Page Count: 360
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
32
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
National Book Award Finalist
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Share your opinion of this book
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
Share your opinion of this book
More by J.D. Salinger
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.