FIXER CHAO

Name: FIXER CHAO
Author: Han Ong
ISBN: 0-374-15575-5

by Han Ong ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2001

There's a little of J.P. Donleavy's Ginger Man in Ong's William, but Fixer Chao is nevertheless an original and perversely...

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A complex and troubling portrayal of alienation develops surely from this lively and often very funny first novel by a MacArthur-winning playwright and actor.

Narrator and protagonist William Narciso Paulhina is a Filipino New Yorker "working" as a gay male hustler when he meets Shem C., a Jewish novelist who offers him an intriguing new fictional life. Though initially wary, William agrees to pose as "Master Chao" from Hong Kong, an expert in the Eastern holistic discipline of feng shui ("the merging of intuition with common sense"), the art of creating, through meditation and renunciation, a more benign personal environment. Neurotic and suggestible New Yorkers are easily fleeced, and William (a self-created intellectual of sorts, inspired by Agatha Christie novels and Kurosawa films) discovers a talent for duplicity that enables him to misuse the tactics of feng shui ("taking the faith and warping it for disastrous ends") against the complacent socialites (mainly his in-laws) on whom Shem has (for reasons only partially revealed to William) sworn revenge. It's a nifty plot idea, and Ong fills the story with vividly sketched and functional supporting characters, ranging from the street people who are William's old acquaintances to the topmost of Manhattan's upper crust, and including William's countrywoman Preciosa, a failed film actress and, interestingly, his alter ego; a 90-year-old "Dowager from whom he has much to learn; and Kendo, the beautiful young man whose seductive presence attracts William's lustful attention and propels him toward the explosive climax. And in its moving dénouement, set in Los Angeles, whence William has fled his outraged "clients," Ong brilliantly conveys both William's exhausted regret and self-hatred and the unquenchable vitality of his irrepressible survival instinct.

There's a little of J.P. Donleavy's Ginger Man in Ong's William, but Fixer Chao is nevertheless an original and perversely entertaining creation: a luminous picaresque with a distinctive mixture of farce and savagery.

Pub Date: April 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-374-15575-5

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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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.