The daughter of the late critic and longtime New York Times reviewer Anatole Broyard debuts with eight stories that break little new ground but are readable, well-crafted, entirely unaffected—and consequently of considerable appeal. In the title story, a young woman named Kate, as her father is dying from cancer, remembers his love of dancing’something he did wonderfully—all the way back to her own very early childhood, when she stood on his feet as he moved her around the living-room rug. In “Mr. Sweetly Indecent,” an equally touching father story though more loosely told, a young woman sees her father kissing another woman—and is seen by him as she looks. Lucy Baldwin, engaged to be married, invites her father for a visit to the lake cabin that she keeps up partly because he once loved it dearly—as he still does, though his second wife (—At the Bottom of the Lake—) is a citified snob and shrew who dislikes it and ruins the visit for everyone—though resulting in one of the best stories in the volume. A girl named Pilar lives with Max but is infatuated with a famous musician who calls her from the road for love-whispering (—Loose Talk—); a schoolgirl named Celia, in the funniest piece, has a father who’s a professional writer—though when he helps her with a paper, it gets only a C-plus (—The Trouble with Mr. Leopold—); and “Ugliest Faces,” if at moments far-fetched, shows post-college love, sex, and guilt being tested. Two closing tales are set in Connecticut, where an Eloise-like girl named Lily has a famous father (—A Day in the Country—) and then, years later, has an epiphany about her own sexuality that’s quite remarkable indeed (—Snowed In—). Stories from an author showing a steady hand and eye, a large heart, and an admirable aversion to trend, fad, or pose of any sort. All eyes should be open, looking for more.
Pub Date: Aug. 2, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-40060-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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