A mildly suspenseful, elegiac first novel of a Japanese family tragedy in a Hawaiian sugarcane plantation town: how an elder brother's accidental death haunts the middle son's life for the next 20 years. Author Iida, who lives on Maui, opens her story in the present day as Spencer Fujii comes on one of his regular visits to his now- dying widowed mother—a woman who has lived her entire life on ``Japanese row'' in Wainoa, Maui, one of many isolated communities devoted to planting and harvesting sugarcane. Surrounded by endless fields, working from cradle to grave, the Japanese and other ethnic worker groups (Filipino, Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, all supervised by whites) had little opportunity for assimilation and followed the customs of their homelands overseas. For the Fujiis, this obedience generates two events that will warp the life of Spencer, the middle son. First, his father, an eldest son, forces his wife to give up her newborn third son to his younger brother's family—an event witnessed in all its emotional awfulness by Spencer and his elder brother, Taizo (``At the price of a baby's love, the older brother was sacrificing for the younger. Uncle and Auntie would no longer be childless''); then, envious of Taizo's assumption of leadership as the eldest son, Spencer begins provoking his brother to similar acts of masochistic selflessness, culminating in an incident at a reservoir in which Taizo drowns. The simplicity of the pidgin dialect can give poignancy to these moments: ``Taizo never like water,'' their father says. ``Why he went inside?'' Spencer: ``Wanted for go.'' Eventually, the guilt drives Spencer away, to Vietnam, to Honolulu, to marriage to a white woman, until, on his final visit back home, he realizes his entire life has been spent denying a secret that everybody already knew—and forgave. Iida piles a lot onto a frail narrative structure, but her skill at balancing rhythmic pidgin with well-wrought description creates a small gem about a fascinating and strongly traditional way of life, now vanishing.
Pub Date: March 31, 1996
ISBN: 1-56512-119-8
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
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
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