STEER TOWARD ROCK

Name: STEER TOWARD ROCK
Author: Fae Myenne Ng
ISBN: 978-0-7868-6097-5

by Fae Myenne Ng ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 13, 2008

Ng’s novel finds its force in the latter stages, which explore the bond between a lively, confident American daughter and...

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Ng’s second novel (Bone, 1993) depicts the tensions and affections of a complex Chinese-American family in San Francisco.

In 1952, Jack Moon Szeto is admitted to the United States as the “son of a native,” Gold Szeto, a businessman and fixer for whom he goes to work as a butcher. Jack becomes something of a Chinatown lothario (“Lord of the Peach Blossoms, lucky in the garden” to use his flowery phrase), but that ends when he falls in love with Joice, daughter of the neighborhood’s corpse-washer and thus, to many, untouchable by association. When Joice becomes pregnant with a daughter and Gold arranges for Jack’s Chinese bride—actually a mistress for his sponsor—to join her “husband” stateside, Jack makes a fateful decision. He informs on Gold to the McCarthy-era Chinese Confession Program, and Gold is deported—not before issuing the order that Jack surrender a pound of flesh (in this case a hand) for his betrayal. Joice, who longs to escape the physical and spiritual confines of Chinatown, moves away and marries. The first half of the book is written in spare, lyrical prose that can be affecting but also frustrating; there’s too much grand abstraction, too much dialogue like “Don’t be a coolie of love!” and “A muddled heart never leads the hero to a new dawn.” Yet Ng also provides brisk, unadorned descriptions of butchery, fortune-cookie making, and more. The book picks up considerably in the second half, which focuses on Jack’s American-born daughter and her loving but fractious relationship with her father, who’s hampered by poor English, his physical handicap and a childhood whose central, awful event she can scarcely imagine. Here the author discovers her true subject: the cultural gulf between immigrants and their children, between aliens and citizens, the naturalized and the native.

Ng’s novel finds its force in the latter stages, which explore the bond between a lively, confident American daughter and her remote Chinese father.

Pub Date: May 13, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-7868-6097-5

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Hyperion

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ORPHAN BACHELORS
by Fae Myenne Ng

- BOOK REVIEW
BONE
by Fae Myenne Ng

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.