Yields modest gifts.
Family bonds—through both blood and marriage—take center stage in this story collection from Schwarzschild (Responsible Men, 2005).
In nine stories that reveal the rich inner lives of otherwise average Americans, many living in the Philadelphia area, it is the things that characters don’t say to their loved ones that carry weight. In “Drift,” a young mom stifled by a dull marriage and dead-end job suddenly steals an unattended truck in hopes of escape, only to make a detour to her ex-lover’s restaurant, where her husband easily finds her. The devastating “What to Expect” features a battle of wills between a passive-aggressive, needy cab driver and the pregnant wife of his adored only son, and in “No Rest for the Middleman,” a man recalls an unexplained beating his immigrant father took at the hands of some shady business associates after attending synagogue during the High Holidays. Spirited elderly couple Milly and Charlie Diamond appear in three of the stories, offering considerable warmth and humor. In the opener, Milly reflects on her enduring love for Charlie, and her fear of losing him, as he undergoes his second open-heart surgery. In another, Charlie tries to give his broken-hearted grandson romantic advice while being reminded of the losses and gains of his own long life. The final tale takes a somewhat metaphysical turn as Milly and Charlie, now confined to a retirement home, find themselves growing younger. This causes considerable confusion for their friends, who believe they have gone on to their final destination (the Hall for Assisted Living) when in fact they have actually embarked on yet another adventure, resolutely together. If only all the stories had characters as memorable and layered as these two.
Yields modest gifts.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-56512-410-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2007
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
