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THE REMOTE COUNTRY OF WOMEN

Two people's vastly different experiences during the Cultural Revolution are the subject of this beautiful, sad novel by an internationally renowned Chinese writer and dissident not previously published in English. The protagonists are Liang Riu, a former university student and Red Guard who has lost his faith in the revolution, and Sunamei, a beautiful girl coming of age in a rural matrilineal community, home of the Mosuo people. Liang's and Sunamei's lives run parallel—but in sharp contrast—to each other. While Liang is being reeducated by tending water buffalo on a farm along with other intellectuals, Sunamei celebrates her skirt-wearing ceremony, a ritual that marks the beginning of adulthood. Liang is imprisoned as a counterrevolutionary; Sunamei takes her first axiao (lover). The Cultural Revolution, which dominates Liang's world, has barely touched Sunamei's: Forces that subdue an entire nation fail to exert the slightest influence over a small, backward community, though they try repeatedly. The government sends officials to enforce Communist morals, including traditional matrimony, among the Mosuo, but when they leave, things continue as before. One official, however, convinces Sunamei to join the county singing and dancing troupe. It is in the village where she lives with this troupe that she and Liang meet—he has been relocated there after being released from prison—and fall in love. Liang insists that they wed, although the concept of marriage doesn't exist in the Mosuo culture, and Sunamei never understands Liang's need to ``own'' her. The relationship is impossible because neither partner is willing or able to live in the other's world. Eventually, Sunamei goes back to her loving and peaceful community, Liang to his modern China, and the reader is left to decide which of the two is in fact more ``primitive.'' A lyrical work, both tragic and uplifting.

Pub Date: July 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-8248-1591-2

Page Count: 344

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1994

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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

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THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

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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