An eerie and elegant puzzle.
When a Tokyo university student hangs herself in a remote forest, three devastated friends seek to understand why.
Reluctantly attending a group blind date, Waseda University student Ryusei Yanagi is immediately attracted to Miwako Sumida, whose “serious expression behind a pair of old-fashioned thick-rimmed glasses” and blunt manner are at odds with her prettier and flirtier girlfriends. “She seemed sensible,” Ryu thinks. As they bond while browsing in an English-language bookshop and reading together in the library, Ryu falls in love with Miwako, sensing a softness and compassion behind her hard exterior, but she refuses to date him. Fumi, Ryu’s transgender sister, is also intrigued by the stubborn and standoffish girl, whom she hires as a painting assistant for her studio. Eight months later, Miwako is dead, and a grieving Ryusei travels with Miwako’s close friend Chie Ohno to Kitsuyama, a mountain village where Miwako spent her final days, to find answers. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, Fumi receives an unexpected visitor who might hold a clue to Miwako’s suicide. Set in the same moodily atmospheric Japanese world as her acclaimed debut novel, Rainbirds (2018), Indonesian-born Singaporean writer Goenawan explores via the perspectives of Ryu, Fumi, and Chie how a carefully crafted facade of hardened perfection can crumble under the weight of painful secrets and shame, leading to tragedy. Although the nature of Miwako’s hidden past becomes apparent early on, she is such a compelling protagonist that the reader doesn’t mind the obviousness. Like Japanese brush painting, the author’s simple, clear prose captures Miwako's vulnerability and complexity. Also vividly drawn are Fumi and Chie, each having built their own unusual protective personas that are gradually revealed.
An eerie and elegant puzzle.Pub Date: March 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64129-119-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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