A well-researched and capably written depiction of the Rape of Nanjing and its effects on victims and survivors.
American and Chinese academics face the horrors of invasion in the early days of World War II.
In this debut historical novel, Zheng draws on his experiences as a researcher at MIT to create Chinese-born Calvin Ren and Massachusetts native John Winthrop, who meet as engineering students in Cambridge. They reunite in Calvin’s hometown of Nanjing to work on China’s nascent military aircraft program. Although John leaves behind a fiancee when he travels to China, he becomes close to Chen May, a teenage acquaintance of Calvin’s. She practices her English with John while he shops for antiques in the market. Their relationship never moves beyond friendship and a few kisses, but John is the one May turns to when nearly all her relatives are killed during the Rape of Nanjing by Japanese forces. They lose touch when he returns to the United States, but May survives the war and pursues justice for her city in the aftermath, while John’s legacy provides education for future generations of Chinese girls. An author’s note explains that Zheng wrote the novel in response to a lack of awareness of the Rape of Nanjing, and an appendix provides resources for further reading on the subject. The novel is solidly grounded in historical research, and notable figures, including Chiang Kai-Shek and his wife, Soong Mayling, make frequent appearances. The book also creates a vivid portrait of 1930s urban China, with its blend of traditional practices and Western influences, and Zheng leaves the reader with clear images of the wine houses, steamed rolls, and everyday objects that make up his characters’ lives. The book excels in dramatic and panoramic moments, like the chaotic evacuation of Nanjing after the attack. The storyline is at times too sprawling, filled with the back stories of characters who do little to drive the plot but serve as victims of Japanese cruelty, but on the whole the book effectively puts a human face on one of World War II’s noteworthy tragedies.
A well-researched and capably written depiction of the Rape of Nanjing and its effects on victims and survivors.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-944347-00-0
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Killian Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Inspired by disclosures of a real-life Florida reform school’s long-standing corruption and abusive practices, Whitehead’s...
The acclaimed author of The Underground Railroad (2016) follows up with a leaner, meaner saga of Deep South captivity set in the mid-20th century and fraught with horrors more chilling for being based on true-life atrocities.
Elwood Curtis is a law-abiding, teenage paragon of rectitude, an avid reader of encyclopedias and after-school worker diligently overcoming hardships that come from being abandoned by his parents and growing up black and poor in segregated Tallahassee, Florida. It’s the early 1960s, and Elwood can feel changes coming every time he listens to an LP of his hero Martin Luther King Jr. sermonizing about breaking down racial barriers. But while hitchhiking to his first day of classes at a nearby black college, Elwood accepts a ride in what turns out to be a stolen car and is sentenced to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reformatory that looks somewhat like the campus he’d almost attended but turns out to be a monstrously racist institution whose students, white and black alike, are brutally beaten, sexually abused, and used by the school’s two-faced officials to steal food and supplies. At first, Elwood thinks he can work his way past the arbitrary punishments and sadistic treatment (“I am stuck here, but I’ll make the best of it…and I’ll make it brief”). He befriends another black inmate, a street-wise kid he knows only as Turner, who has a different take on withstanding Nickel: “The key to in here is the same as surviving out there—you got to see how people act, and then you got to figure out how to get around them like an obstacle course.” And if you defy them, Turner warns, you’ll get taken “out back” and are never seen or heard from again. Both Elwood’s idealism and Turner’s cynicism entwine into an alliance that compels drastic action—and a shared destiny. There's something a tad more melodramatic in this book's conception (and resolution) than one expects from Whitehead, giving it a drugstore-paperback glossiness that enhances its blunt-edged impact.
Inspired by disclosures of a real-life Florida reform school’s long-standing corruption and abusive practices, Whitehead’s novel displays its author’s facility with violent imagery and his skill at weaving narrative strands into an ingenious if disquieting whole.Pub Date: July 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-53707-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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