The moral of these excellent tales: Never underestimate your small-town neighbor/bedfellow.
Ten Gogol-like tales about provincial scheming, in a first English translation for Vietnamese writer, actress, director and painter Doan Le.
Many of these picaresque stories are set in a rural area called Chua Village, a microcosm for Vietnamese society that’s rife with class and sex oppression, feudal backwardness and government corruption. In the first, title, story, the ghosts of the local cemetery all look forward to the initiation ceremony of a new arrival—the well-decorated brigadier general in the glass coffin—except that the figure who emerges is an electrician, third class retired, whose body was switched for the great man at the mortuary because of a failure to have greased the attending guard’s palm with the customary “gratuity.” “The Real Estate of Chua Village” is a satiric look at a weasely resident who attempts to sell the village pond, setting off a real-estate fever among the clannish residents who try to outdo each other in get-rich-quick schemes. In “The Venus of Chua Village,” a none-too-successful painter of The Twenty Springtimes of Woman accepts the modeling services of a beautiful young village girl sold off by her brother to pay his gambling debts. Her sacrifice deeply touches the painter, and he never parts with the painting until years later, when it’s stolen by the model’s daughter to redress her mother’s martyrdom. Occasionally, Doan Le slips into Kafkaesque allegory, as in “Achieving Flyhood,” about an aging, divorced acrobat who petitions the housing authorities for an apartment but is transformed into a fly—a gay fly, at that—and so is happily rid of the problem of housing (and women) for good. Elsewhere, stories achieve a personal, poignant tone, as in “The Double Bed of Chua Village,” about the narrator wife in bed with her sleeping husband as she resolves, clear-eyed but sorrowfully, to leave her mate of 28 years before he leaves her.
The moral of these excellent tales: Never underestimate your small-town neighbor/bedfellow.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-931896-12-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Curbstone Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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