A colorful meditation on friendship and creation nested within a fictional universe.
A childhood friendship marks a young Korean-American man’s imagination for life.
Lim (The Strangers, 2013, etc.) goes full meta for a twisty, often confusing, but entertaining reflection on art, resistance, heroes, and villains. It begins simply enough, with our nameless narrator describing what it’s like to be a preteen of Asian descent living in rural Ohio. The protagonist’s most important relationship is with his friend Vu, a cipher who disappears and reappears throughout the novel. In this opening chapter, Lim tosses in a throwaway line that turns out to resonate later: “Here is one lesson that Vu taught me. It maybe doesn’t seem on the surface to be about comic books, but it is.” But from here, things get pretty weird. Strange and somewhat vague interstitial messages, all starting with the titular greeting "Dear Cyborgs," serve as the pivot between different narratives—“When I say cyborgs, of course I mean us,” the book explains later. Following the introduction, Lim abruptly cuts to the narrative of cyberpunk detective Frank Exit, who is hot on the heels of a cultural terrorist named Ms. Mistleto. The hyperkinetic chapters focused on their conflict find the duo chasing each other in far-flung locales from Sri Lanka to the Himalayas. Yet other chapters find the primary narrator, a writer, deep in discussions with his sister and other friends on topics largely centered on the nature of art and protest and ranging from a Bangladeshi artist who commits suicide to the activist and Black Panther Richard Aoki. The villain Ms. Mistleto also becomes a flesh-and-blood character complete with an origin story. “Losing everything does gift you with freedom if nothing else,” she explains. “That’s a rewrite of a pithier song refrain.” It’s not always easy to follow; at one point, Lim randomly inserts a chapter from the detective novel that one of the book’s fictional characters is reading. But it is eerily reflective of our fractured times, darting from subject to subject with the speed of a mouse click.
A colorful meditation on friendship and creation nested within a fictional universe.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-53711-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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