Moments here of fairytale charm, but the air at such high spiritual altitudes may be too rarefied for many Western readers.
Romantic and spiritual love in ancient China occupy this latest (The River Below, 2000, etc.) from the distinguished Chinese author long resident in France.
The story takes place toward the end of the Ming Dynasty (early 17th century), when crime and corruption are rampant. One victim is our protagonist Dao-sheng. As a young violinist, part of a theater troupe, he dares to exchange glances and smiles with the beautiful Lan-ying, betrothed to the tyrannical Second Lord Zhao, who promptly condemns Dao-sheng to exile and slave labor. No matter: those few transforming moments were enough to convince Dao-sheng, a Taoist, that his and Lan-ying’s fates are linked by the shen, the most vital of all spiritual essences. Thirty years pass. The now-grizzled Dao-sheng is a healer and soothsayer who has been living in a mountainside Taoist monastery, and the time is ripe for another approach to Lan-ying. He travels to her city and sets up shop outside a Buddhist temple she frequents. The opportunity comes for Dao-sheng to minister to the sickly Lan-ying, who has been discarded by Second Lord after two miscarriages, forcing her to live in lonely isolation. The invalid remembers the former musician—they are indeed soulmates—and her joy over their reunion is as great as his. Dao-sheng restores her to health and to her former beauty. The contacts between them are delicate and restrained, climaxing with a joining of hands under a full moon, whereupon “the lovers floated into a separate state,” a phrase unfortunately banal-sounding in this translation from the French. Eventually, Second Lord, deathly ill himself after years of debauchery, figures out the situation. He tries to strangle Lan-ying but dies in the process, and she retreats to a convent while Dao-sheng returns to the monastery, sustained by his faith in their undying devotion.
Moments here of fairytale charm, but the air at such high spiritual altitudes may be too rarefied for many Western readers.Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-31574-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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