An inconsistent but appealing novel about life and love within the strictures of a repressive regime.
An emotionally resonant coming-of-age story set during China’s Cultural Revolution.
When Li Ling receives a letter notifying him of his former lover’s death, his wife notices his distress and inquires about it; virtually the entire story is contained within his flashback narrative. He tells of being captivated by Zhang Lily from the moment he met her as a young schoolboy recently returned to Shanghai from Hong Kong. The two quickly became inseparable, eventually including Big Head, another young boy, in their childhood adventures. But their lives were turned upside down by the communist rise to power. Suddenly, Zhang Lily’s father, a professor, and Li Ling’s father, a surgeon, were stripped of professional esteem; schoolchildren were forced to labor in factories and fields; suspected dissidents were subjected to forceful re-education and public censure. Torn apart by the demands of an oppressive state, the lovers promised to hold each other in their hearts forever. Years of drudgery passed before college admissions were reinstated on a large scale, at which point the couple coincidentally found themselves enrolled at the same institution. However, the reunion, while joyful, proved to be not quite what Li Ling expected. Chen (The Mystery of Revenge, 2013 ) offers a somewhat meandering story, but the sedate pacing allows for a deeper exploration of the effects of the Cultural Revolution on individual lives. Dialogue is generally natural and authentic, though some sections are unrealistically didactic (e.g., a stilted discussion of the importance of free elections). The plotting is similarly uneven, a mix of engaging plot twists with those that lack credibility, as with an accused rapist’s initial reluctance to defend himself due to his worrying about his accuser’s potential punishment. Repeated references to the forget-me-not Lily gave Li Ling can be a bit heavy-handed, though the motif itself is endearing. Minor editing errors (e.g., “we were just prawns in the manipulative hands of the state”) are pervasive but don’t detract significantly. The flashback device is necessary for a surprise conclusion that, though only mildly surprising, is nonetheless satisfying.
An inconsistent but appealing novel about life and love within the strictures of a repressive regime.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-1625108470
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Tate Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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