This sympathetic account of a silver-screen legend flies admirably between triumph and tragedy but struggles to soar.
A pioneering Chinese American actress reflects on her life in Hollywood and the prejudice she faced throughout her career in this biofiction.
As a child coming of age in early-20th-century Los Angeles, Anna May Wong longed to be an actress—and she made it happen. This would have been unimaginable if it weren’t true, considering that Wong rose to fame in an era of the Chinese Exclusion Act, anti-miscegenation laws, and morality codes in the United States. As the book begins, Wong is traveling by train from California to New York in 1960, near the end of her life, and she's reading over three notebooks in which she's chronicled her stardom, dazzling social life, complicated family life, activism, and struggles with racism, misogyny, alcohol, and health. There's no doubt that the breadth of Wong’s life is worthy of artistic treatment, and she’s inspired many Asian American writers, including novelist Peter Ho Davies and poet Sally Wen Mao. The U.S. Mint released an Anna May Wong quarter in 2022. Tsukiyama presents Wong as a complex, savvy, iconoclastic artist caught between cultures as she surfs the tides of history. The novel demonstrates how Wong courageously weathered the industry's transition from silent films to talkies to the advent of television as well as her tumultuous times, from the Roaring ’20s through the aftermath of World War II. She had fascinating friendships with the likes of Josephine Baker and Marlene Dietrich and experiences working across America, Europe, and Asia. But in offering so much painstaking, historically accurate detail, Tsukiyama sacrifices story. For readers familiar with Wong’s biography, the book reads too much like an elevated Wikipedia entry. Swaths of the novel are repetitive, summarizing previous events as if they were weekly series recaps or emphasizing Wong’s struggles as a third-generation Chinese American woman without imagining any more of her internal landscape.
This sympathetic account of a silver-screen legend flies admirably between triumph and tragedy but struggles to soar.Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9780063213753
Page Count: 352
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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