The picaresque adventures of a Japanese intellectual with a retiring personality who ``craved danger'' in the Metroland of 1980's London, as chronicled by trend-noting British critic James (Flying Visits, 1986; Unreliable Memoirs, 1981, etc.). Young Suzuki, would-be diplomat and writer, has been sent to London by the Japanese government to acquire the ``cosmopolitan ease which cannot be learned at home even in the best schools of etiquette.'' Employed in a Japanese bookstore, Suzuki saves his money while polishing his English—which naturally turns out to be a far more confusing language than he'd anticipated. To overcome his shyness, he joins a health club, where he meets not only the beautiful broker Lilian but also journalist Robertson, who teaches him colloquial English in exchange for Japanese lessons. Meanwhile, London on the eve of the stock-market crash is awash with money and bright, ambitious young people—plus a darker side represented by the pervasive filth in the streets and by drug-taking punks like the suicidal and self-named Jane Austen, whom Suzuki meets in his bookshop. Having craved danger, Suzuki's soon caught up in a mad whirl of complicated love affairs, including one with Lilian, who turns out to be the mistress of a famous tycoon; brawls with nightclub bouncers; and, for a Japanese destined for the diplomatic corps, the worst possible outcome—an appearance in the tabloids, where he's called the ``Japanese Rambo.'' The Japanese embassy is not amused, though Suzuki's English friends are much impressed. About to be sent home in disgrace, he is rescued by an unlikely turn of events that takes him back to Japan—but in considerable style and with enough material for a successful novel. Less the witty sendup of two cultures, which it so strains to be, than just another tale of decline and fall without moral bite. Still, a diverting read.
Pub Date: March 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-41172-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1993
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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