An acid indictment of Asian stereotypes and a parable for outcasts feeling invisible in this fast-moving world.
The inspired author of How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (2010) delivers another inventive drama about an Asian actor who dreams of becoming a star.
Like his contemporary Jesse Ball, Yu is a novelist who plays endlessly with style, genre, and nonlinear narratives. Here, the story is delivered in seven distinct “acts” depicting the arc of Willis Wu, a young actor of Taiwanese descent who dreams of graduating from the pigeonhole of “Generic Asian Man” on television to “Kung Fu Guy,” a shining star on the silver screen equal to the legendary Bruce Lee. Yu splits his storytelling between Willis’ internal monologue, during which he talks to himself about what he’s experiencing and how he feels, and the script for the TV show he appears on in a small role, Black and White, a police procedural featuring Sarah Green, an accomplished young detective, and Miles Turner, her African American partner. In spare but moving prose, Willis describes life among Asian Americans living as so-called foreigners, examines the history of bigotry against immigrants in the West for centuries, tells the sweet but sensible story of how his parents met, and relates how his part on the show evolves over time. It can be funny, as Willis explains the vagaries of the actor’s life: “When you die, it sucks. The first thing that happens is that you can’t work for forty-five days.” The book could have ended more straightforwardly but the author couldn’t resist an elegant twist, merging Willis’ increasingly complicated emotional life with the plot of the show. As it all comes to a close, the author delivers a bittersweet yet affectionate ending for his endearing, unlikely doppelgänger.
An acid indictment of Asian stereotypes and a parable for outcasts feeling invisible in this fast-moving world.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-307-90719-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
PROFILES
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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