An armchair tour of complex Indonesian issues, incorporated in a readable thriller.
In this debut novel, an American couple’s marriage becomes tested by a culture of corruption in 1980s Indonesia.
Jack Harrison is a handsome, self-made banker who worked hard to pull himself out of poverty in the South. His wife, Laura, is a compassionate redhead with a burgeoning career as a fashion designer in New York. She’s forced to leave her career behind when Jack’s boss offers to make him president of a bank in Jakarta. There, a sinking feeling haunts Laura when they move into the morbid home of the bank’s former president, who left in a hurry under mysterious circumstances. When Laura finds out that he departed because his wife committed suicide, she takes it as an ominous sign. Despite warnings that Jakarta is tough for rich expat wives, Laura tries to carve out a life for herself, getting involved in ecological activism, teaching children, and even attempting to start a small business. Jack, on the other hand, has a harder time adjusting. The bank he’s taken over is owed $1 million from a defaulted loan and a local judge refuses to help the institution’s legal proceedings without a bribe. As Jack tries to find more business for his bank, he realizes cutting corners is de rigueur in Indonesia. A particularly tempting offer comes from Johnny, the son of the president of Indonesia, whose charming demeanor masks shady rainforest lumber practices, among other things. With Jack hiding the complexities of the bank’s reality from Laura, a rift opens in their marriage. In this intricate tale, Kearns is skilled at building the stakes, but his treatment of local characters leaves much to be desired. The Asian women Jack meets are frequently described in exotified terms (“In the soft light from above, her dark hair shone like the luster of black satin”). “The husbands here go gaga over Asian women,” one expat wife says to Laura—a warning that echoes throughout the novel. But as Jack and Laura’s marriage slowly unravels, a taut plot thread that threatens his livelihood deftly comes into focus, pushing the heroine to the edge and turning the book into an intriguing page-turner.
An armchair tour of complex Indonesian issues, incorporated in a readable thriller.Pub Date: May 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-945181-50-4
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Moonshine Cove Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
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