A popular Singapore writer makes her American debut with a maudlin take on doomed love between master and slave. It's a supposedly shocking story—with its revelation that slavery was still practiced in 1950s Singapore—but, in fact, the shock is muted in a tale that has little modern resonance: Except for brief mentions of automobiles, the setting could be any time in Chinese history. The lack of concrete detail, the character's cozy chats with gods, and the prophetic dreams punctuating the narrative also make it seem more a sentimental melodrama than a searing indictment of hidden viciousness. When Han turns four, her hard- pressed pregnant mother sells her to the rich House of Wu. Han is to be a bondmaid, one of the enslaved women who clean and who must endure the lascivious attentions of visiting priests as well as male family members. Little Han is so upset by the sale that she becomes extremely ill, or, as the household sees it, possessed by demons that have to exorcised. When she recovers, she attaches herself to young Master Wu, the six-year-old grandson of the Matriarch and Patriarch. The children become friends and secret playmates. Meanwhile, the older bondmaids, jealous of Han's emerging beauty and spirit, plot her downfall. Finally, young Wu goes away to school, coming back only to marry the daughter of the House of Chang. Han, though, has never forgotten him. Eventually, the two become lovers, but when they're discovered, Han, now pregnant, is forced to leave. She gives birth to a son, who's taken from her and replaced with the baby girl Wu's wife has just borne. As storm clouds gather, Wu embraces the dying Han; following her death, the narrative suggests, she becomes a goddess, one who ``always saw and heard with compassion''—except in matters concerning the Wu and Chang Houses. Pulp fiction with an exotic gloss. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 23, 1997
ISBN: 0-87951-790-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1997
Thriller fans will find so much space devoted to Gia and Jake’s sexual acrobatics that little time is left for the plot to...
A small Tennessee mountain town is awash in sex and scandal in Belle’s first novel.
Gia Andrews, a disaster relief worker, is also a convicted murderer’s daughter. Her father, Ray, was convicted of killing his wife and Gia’s stepmother, Ella Mae, and sentenced to life in prison. But Ray is dying, and prison officials are releasing him on compassionate grounds; Gia’s uncle Cal, a prominent lawyer, has recruited her to return home from Kenya to care for her dad in his home in Rogersville. Despite the fact that she hasn’t seen her father since she left many years ago, she returns, believing her brother, Bo, and sister, Lexi, will help her, but she finds that neither wants anything to do with their father. Her nearest allies turn out to be the home-care worker Uncle Cal has hired, Fannie, and the new man she meets, a bar-and-grill owner named Jake. When Gia meets a law professor planning to write a book about wrongful convictions, he tells her he believes Ray didn’t kill Ella Mae and that Cal, who was Ray’s attorney, didn’t mount much of a defense. After looking into these allegations, Gia discovers her stepmother had an affair with another man and wonders whether her father could be innocent after all. While trying to unravel the mystery of who really killed Ella Mae, things heat up between Gia and Jake, and suddenly the mystery takes a whole new direction. Belle’s a smooth writer whose characters are vibrant and truly reflect the area where the novel is set, but the plot—while clever—takes a back seat to Gia’s and Ella Mae’s separate, but equally steamy, sexual exploits.
Thriller fans will find so much space devoted to Gia and Jake’s sexual acrobatics that little time is left for the plot to develop.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1722-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
The late (d. 1988), leathery, awesomely unstoppable (over 100 books still in print) L’Amour, still producing fluently from his grave (End of the Drive, 1997), offers one more gathering of unpublished tales, proving again that great writing laughs at death. Showing sheer contempt for slow openings, L’Amour’s seven newly discovered short stories offer some breath-catching first paragraphs echoing with the cold steel click of a Colt .45 hammer being cocked. The lead story, “The Man from Utah,” polishes L’Amour’s walnut prose to its glossiest grain. Bearing a fearsome reputation as a gunfighter, Marshall Utah Blaine arrives in Squaw Creek to investigate 14 recent murders (three were marshals) by a cunning bandit masquerading as an upright citizen. By a process of deduction, the shrewd Blaine narrows his suspects down until he has the killer. “Here Ends the Trail” opens with a High L’Amouresque Miltonic Inversion: “Cold was the night and bitter the wind and brutal the trail behind. Hunched in the saddle, I growled at the dark and peered through the blinding rain. The agony of my wound was a white-hot flame from the bullet of Korry Gleason.” This builds to an explosive climax that mixes vengeance with great-heartedness. “Battle at Burnt Camp,” “Ironwood Station” and “The Man from the Dead Hills” all live up to the melodrama of their blue-steel titles. “Strawhouse Trail” opens memorably with the line: “He looked through his field glasses into the eyes of a dying man.” And never lets up. The title novella tells of Lona Markham’s unwilling engagement to six-foot-five, 250-pound, harsh-lipped Frank Mailer, who has “blue, slightly glassy eyes.” Will Lance Kilkenny, the mysterious Black Rider, save her from indestructible Mailer? Stinging stories of powerful men against landscapes you can strike a match on.
Pub Date: May 11, 1998
ISBN: 0-553-10833-6
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998
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