Gilbert’s intelligence and verbal dexterity don’t count for much, unharnessed to theme or plot.
A meandering first novel tracks the experiences of participants in a drug story.
The two-week study, in August 1999, is seen through the eyes of narrator Billy Schine, a 28-year-old Harvard graduate with a problem: He owes sixty grand in student loan repayments, and Ragnar is hot on his trail in Manhattan. Billy has never met Ragnar, the collection agency guy, but he has lurid fantasies about him. It’s time to skip town, so feckless Billy abandons his live-in girlfriend Sally and his temp job as a word processor and heads upstate to the medical research center. There, along with other “normals” (healthy, allergy-free types), he will be tested for reactions to an anti-psychotic drug. But where is the novel headed? Will it be a medical thriller? There’s only a taste of that, at the end. Black comedy? There’s sophomoric kidding around, but that doesn’t qualify. How about Billy’s existential drama? He’s an outsider and underachiever, the product of parents who doted solely on each other; now his mother has Alzheimer’s and his father is arranging for them to die together on their wedding anniversary. Yet Billy remains a lightweight. When the study is over and he has the chance to be the subject of an off-the-books, potentially lethal experiment, Billy jumps at it. Why? He has no good answer. By default, then, this is a novel about some guys hanging out: swallowing their pills, giving their blood, swapping war stories of life on the guinea-pig circuit, and watching way too much television. For good measure, Gilbert (the collection Remote Feed, 1998) throws in a delusional roommate subdued by security; some unlikely animal rights activists; and a lone female patient, Gretchen, who makes full use of all the available men. Her mission statement, incidentally, makes more sense than anything Billy has to say for himself.
Gilbert’s intelligence and verbal dexterity don’t count for much, unharnessed to theme or plot.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-58234-456-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
With lantern-lit tales of old China, a rich humanity, and an acute ear for bicultural tuning, a splendid first novel—one...
An inordinately moving, electric exploration of two warring cultures fused in love, focused on the lives of four Chinese women—who emigrated, in their youth, at various times, to San Francisco—and their very American 30-ish daughters.
Tan probes the tension of love and often angry bewilderment as the older women watch their daughters "as from another shore," and the daughters struggle to free themselves from maddening threads of arcane obligation. More than the gap between generations, more than the dwindling of old ways, the Chinese mothers most fear that their own hopes and truths—the secret gardens of the spirit that they have cultivated in the very worst of times—will not take root. A Chinese mother's responsibility here is to "give [my daughter] my spirit." The Joy Luck Club, begun in 1939 San Francisco, was a re-creation of the Club founded by Suyuan Woo in a beleaguered Chinese city. There, in the stench of starvation and death, four women told their "good stories," tried their luck with mah-jongg, laughed, and "feasted" on scraps. Should we, thought Suyuan, "wait for death or choose our own happiness?" Now, the Chinese women in America tell their stories (but not to their daughters or to one another): in China, an unwilling bride uses her wits, learns that she is "strong. . .like the wind"; another witnesses the suicide of her mother; and there are tales of terror, humiliation and despair. One recognizes fate but survives. But what of the American daughters—in turn grieved, furious, exasperated, amused ("You can't ever tell a Chinese mother to shut up")? The daughters, in their confessional chapters, have attempted childhood rebellions—like the young chess champion; ever on maternal display, who learned that wiles of the chessboard did not apply when opposing Mother, who had warned her: "Strongest wind cannot be seen." Other daughters—in adulthood, in crises, and drifting or upscale life-styles—tilt with mothers, one of whom wonders: "How can she be her own person? When did I give her up?"
With lantern-lit tales of old China, a rich humanity, and an acute ear for bicultural tuning, a splendid first novel—one that matches the vigor and sensitivity of Maxine Hong Kingston (The Warrior Woman, 1976; China Men, 1980) in her tributes to the abundant heritage of Chinese-Americans.Pub Date: March 22, 1989
ISBN: 0143038095
Page Count: -
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1989
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Refreshingly filled with love rather than sex, this coming-of-age novel examines the human cost of political repression.
A star-crossed romance captures the turmoil of pre-revolutionary Iran in Seraji’s debut.
From the rooftops of Tehran in 1973, life looks pretty good to 17-year-old Pasha Shahed and his friend Ahmed. They’re bright, funny and good-looking; they’re going to graduate from high school in a year; and they’re in love with a couple of the neighborhood girls. But all is not idyllic. At first the girls scarcely know the boys are alive, and one of them, Zari, is engaged to Doctor—not actually a doctor but an exceptionally gifted and politically committed young Iranian. In this neighborhood, the Shah is a subject of contempt rather than veneration, and residents fear SAVAK, the state’s secret police force, which operates without any restraint. Pasha, the novel’s narrator and prime dreamer, focuses on two key periods in his life: the summer and fall of 1973, when his life is going rather well, and the winter of 1974, when he’s incarcerated in a grim psychiatric hospital. Among the traumatic events he relates are the sudden arrest, imprisonment and presumed execution of Doctor. Pasha feels terrible because he fears he might have inadvertently been responsible for SAVAK having located Doctor’s hiding place; he also feels guilty because he’s always been in love with Zari. She makes a dramatic political statement, setting herself on fire and sending Pasha into emotional turmoil. He is both devastated and further worried when the irrepressible Ahmed also seems to come under suspicion for political activity. Pasha turns bitterly against religion, raising the question of God’s existence in a world in which the bad guys seem so obviously in the ascendant. Yet the badly scarred Zari assures him, “Things will change—they always do.”
Refreshingly filled with love rather than sex, this coming-of-age novel examines the human cost of political repression.Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-451-22681-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009
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