An expansive but stifled drama about the ravages of war.
A debut historical novel follows a young woman struggling in Singapore during and after the Japanese occupation and her abandoned daughter.
Set at the outset of the invasion of Singapore by brutal Japanese forces during World War II, this tale focuses on a teenage girl, Li Lian Goh, who is spared from death only to be forced into servitude in a military brothel. After she is impregnated by a sadistic Japanese officer, Li Lian flees the brothel to secure her own safety and to protect her child. Li Lian finds shelter in a Malay village, where she gives birth to her daughter, Maimunah. Leaving Maimunah to be raised in the village, Li Lian returns to Singapore to join the burgeoning resistance. During one of its jungle campaigns, she saves the lives of two sisters, the owners of a nearby rubber plantation, helping them to return home. Out of gratitude, the sisters leave their estate to Li Lian, where she quickly becomes successful in the rubber manufacturing business as well as in the estate’s secret production of opium and heroin. Li Lian’s triumph makes her a target of rival organizations, particularly as the heroin trade blossoms during the Vietnam War. With the influx of American armed forces into Singapore, heroin makes its way through the ranks, creating problems for military officials. American officer Mike Cagle is assigned to collaborate with the U.S. Embassy to trace the supply chain. Through his investigation of Singapore’s bars and brothels, Mike crosses paths with Maimunah, now a college student studying abroad. They quickly fall in love as Mike’s work draws their histories closer together and puts him in great danger. Levey crafts a plot that interweaves the characters’ lives with the conflict-laden history of Singapore. The novel provides a singular glimpse into the battles of that Asian nation, reflecting the hardships of those living through multiple generations of war and violence as well as providing details about the area’s rubber and opium trades, all explored in depth. Given the scope of the book’s preoccupations, it is not surprising that Levey struggles to maintain the narrative’s balance, with the story and prose often lagging, particularly during the technical or historical digressions. These shortcomings shouldn’t deter readers from becoming absorbed in the tragedies that the tale’s characters endure, but they undercut the novel’s ambitions.
An expansive but stifled drama about the ravages of war.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4917-7750-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
