by Ho Lin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2017
A well-crafted and welcome short-fiction debut.
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Lin follows the lives of dreamers and agitators in this debut collection of stories.
In “Ghost Wife,” a Chinese-American man in Beijing begins a relationship with a woman whom he met after her scalp was ripped off by a wild dog. A Communist Party official is tasked with babysitting a journalist, making sure that the curious writer doesn’t see anything that he could use to criticize the government in “National Holiday.” A minor altercation between two people on a San Francisco subway in “Charge” becomes a focal point for all the frustration that either person has experienced in their lives up to that point. In each of these nine stories, Lin follows Chinese people as they struggle with their political, cultural, and personal baggage, and he provides insights into the mysteries of human interaction. In the title story, for example, a Chinese model/exotic dancer moves numbly between the arenas of her existence—amorous, familial, social—while also longing for a new life that she can’t bring herself to live. She sets the tone for the rest of Lin’s characters, who often wish to escape from situations they didn’t choose for themselves—and from some they did. “One could almost believe them to be comatose if not for their moving bodies, their jerky attempts at spontaneity,” observes the model about her fellow dancers. “A nation of stone-faced ballroom dancers, she concludes sadly—sure you can learn the foxtrot and the waltz like you memorize poems, but what does that get you?” It isn’t all cynicism, though, as the author also provides a world large enough for his characters to dream in. As the woman who briefly loses her scalp says, “You know China is so big that every story you hear must be true, somewhere?” Lin writes with a natural lyricism and a wondrous ability to render the spontaneity of human thought, as in “Litany, Eulogy”: “My sister with the bouncy head, and the arm I slammed in a car door once, because I was lazy enough to do it. Her face went all red as a result, and she never seemed more alive.” He’s willing to experiment with form, as well; the tale “Floating World” is subtitled “A Film Treatment,” and its structure is just that—describing its characters’ actions from a distance in clipped, malleable language. “Blood-Stained Heroes” offer a series of vignettes that follow several people in the midst of high-pressure situations—a child fleeing his father’s punishment, combatants in a gangland gun battle, a calligraphist auditioning to join the emperor’s court. The story leaps from one player to another in a manner that always keeps the reader unsteady. Overall, these tales all feel very much of a piece, with shared themes of isolation, identity crises, and interconnectedness along with some recurring character types. Along the way, Lin manages to crystallize a set of concerns of a specific, unique group of people while also managing to make them feel universal and timeless.
A well-crafted and welcome short-fiction debut.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-58790-403-5
Page Count: 202
Publisher: Regent Press
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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