This bumpy tale about two young women finding themselves and reconnecting across cultures glimmers with beautiful portrayals...
A debut novel focuses on two South Korean sisters reunited in Los Angeles seeking success and love.
Sally Lee-Grant, who left South Korea for America when she was a child, hasn’t seen her younger sister, Jinhee, in 16 years. When Jinhee arrives in LA, Sally reminisces about the kids they used to be. But Sally’s American life is not the way that Jinhee imagined. Sally, a struggling actress, lives in a less-than-glamorous apartment with her aspiring screenwriter fiance, Jason. She is supposed to aid her mother and sister, but barely supports herself as a cocktail waitress at a sleazy club. Ever since she was born, Sally hasn’t fit in. Sgt. George Grant, an American soldier, helped her mother during Sally’s birth. When Sally’s mother announced that she was in financial distress and her two daughters must live with relatives, George returned and made an enticing offer. He wanted to adopt Sally and take her to America. Sally agreed to go if her mother would keep Jinhee at home. Jinhee felt betrayed when her sister and George departed for the U.S. Now, Sally tries to help Jinhee get a job, navigate LA, acquire a green card, and learn to drive. Through Jinhee’s eyes, readers see the struggles of moving to a new nation, longing for home, and attempting to assimilate. When she is called as a witness in a court case, it leads her to make a difficult decision, and Sally finds herself in a new phase of her life. Kim’s novel moves back and forth between the present (1999) and the past (Jinhee and Sally’s childhood in South Korea). The descriptions of South Korea and LA are vivid, bountiful with imagery of food and city life. There is a zany cast of characters that surrounds the sisters’ childhood and the store that their parents own. But the author often uses parentheticals to define Korean terms, which is jarring and redundant as the book includes a glossary. In addition, the opening chapter is messy. It features an unnecessary monologue by Sally in a tone that is not repeated anywhere else, followed by a rushed dream sequence and Jinhee’s sudden arrival.
This bumpy tale about two young women finding themselves and reconnecting across cultures glimmers with beautiful portrayals of home and a new country.Pub Date: June 18, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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