Stories narrated by chewing gum might not be the next popular flavor of fiction, but this collection is sweet and endearing...
In Kirwan’s debut, pieces of anthropomorphized chewing gum narrate a collection of linked short stories.
You’ve heard of chick lit—now get ready for Chiclet. The characters populating Kirwan’s collection come from many walks of life, from the business sector to organic farms, and some from the shelves of convenience stores. Gum, in the process of being chewed, narrates each story. As it’s mashed between molars, it’s able to observe the environment of its chewer and gain access to the person’s thoughts. The chewers deal with heartbreak and budding love, the perils of online dating and the dangers of embezzling money, all while their faithful gum offers “juicy blasts” of flavors like “cherry jubilee” and “fruity explosion” to keep them going. Gum, we learn, is a compassionate entity and grateful to be masticated but also capable of judgment (as was the case in the tale of the aforementioned corporate thief). Each piece eagerly shares its day’s adventure with others once it’s inevitably spat upon the sidewalk (at each story’s end). Kirwan uses two narrators: an omniscient voice provides the main narrative—many of the stories feel more like character sketches with a moral motivation, rather than complete stories—while the gum relates the immediate action and physical state of the chewer, e.g., rate of chewing, level of salivation or whether bile is threatening to rise. Ultimately, it’s revolting and rather repetitive (how much can you say about gum?), but Kirwan follows her conceit to its conclusion. There’s a conflict of audience here. The subject matter is more suitable for adults, while the narrative device and humor are fitting for a younger audience—or the gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Despite a heavy reliance on references to popular culture and commodities, Kirwan writes with compassion and a clear sense of who her characters are.
Stories narrated by chewing gum might not be the next popular flavor of fiction, but this collection is sweet and endearing in its own way.Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481003988
Page Count: 178
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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