In a world with increasingly flexible borders, Teo’s fine novel about traditions lost, found and reshaped resonates beyond...
Set in contemporary Australia, Teo’s second novel (Love and Vertigo, not reviewed) is a beautifully crafted story of immigrant alienation, splintered families and the saving grace of friendship.
In the suburbs of Sydney, Tien Ho, Nigel “Gibbo” Gibson and Justin Cheong have been friends since childhood, brought together by a kind of misfit camaraderie and ethnic bonding (Gibbo uselessly insists he’s part Chinese), though culturally they couldn’t be more dissimilar. Justin’s parents are affluent Singaporeans, his father a doctor, his mother the cheerful master of their sanitary house (much is covered in plastic), and the two have high hopes for their son’s future. At a piano lesson, he befriends Gibbo, the flabby, teary-eyed son of a tough Aussie dad and English mum, both dumbfounded by their unimpressive offspring. The two boys are later joined by Tien at school, half Vietnamese, half African-American, the product of her mother Linh’s wartime romance. For most of her childhood,Tien is raised by aunts and uncles—they were able to escape with her to Australia while Lihn was mysteriously left behind. She regards prim Mrs. Gibson as the supreme maternal surrogate until Lihn arrives in Australia, and Tien is suddenly caught between two worlds. This uneasy space of compromise and disconnection is occupied by all three friends: Justin is gay and unable to reconcile his sexuality with the expectations of his family; Tien longs for a kind of assimilated Australian life that will erase the guilt she has for hating her traditional mother; and ironically, sad Gibbo longs for the kind of attention found in Asian families. The three move into adulthood, where they grapple with the loneliness of a deliberately forged identity, a territory that has little room for family or old friends. The book embodies the immigrant experience (even venturing into Lihn’s past, from her childhood in Vietnam to her eventual middle-aged escape to dull suburbia) and never loses its emotional intimacy.
In a world with increasingly flexible borders, Teo’s fine novel about traditions lost, found and reshaped resonates beyond the Australian experience.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-56947-440-0
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2006
The Stand did less well than The Shining, and The Dead Zone will do less well than either—as the King of high horror (Carrie) continues to move away from the grand-gothic strain that once distinguished him from the other purveyors of psychic melodrama. Here he's taken on a political-suspense plot formula that others have done far better, giving it just the merest trappings of deviltry. Johnnie Smith of Cleaves Mills, Maine, is a super-psychic; after a four-year coma, he has woken up to find that he can see the future—all of it except for certain areas he calls the "dead zone." So Johnnie can do great things, like saving a friend from death-by-lightning or reuniting his doctor with long-lost relatives. But Johnnie also can see a horrible presidential candidate on the horizon. He's Mayor Gregory Aromas Stillson of Ridgeway, N.H., and only Johnnie knows that this apparently klutzy candidate is really the devil incarnate—that if Stillson is elected he'll become the new Hitler and plunge the world into atomic horror! What can Johnnie do? All he can do is try to assassinate this Satanic candidate—in a climactic shootout that is recycled and lackluster and not helped by King's clumsy social commentary (". . . it was as American as The Wonderful Worm of Disney"). Johnnie is a faceless hero, and never has King's banal, pulpy writing been so noticeable in its once-through-the-typewriter blather and carelessness. Yes, the King byline will ensure a sizeable turnout, but the word will soon get around that the author of Carrie has this time churned out a ho-hum dud.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1979
ISBN: 0451155750
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1979
Though extension is possible, make no mistake about it; this is a ward and not a microcosm.
This is a book which courts the dangers of two extremes.
It can be taken not seriously enough or, more likely, critical climate considered, too seriously. Kesey's first novel is narrated by a half-Indian schizophrenic who has withdrawn completely by feigning deaf-muteness. It is set in a mental ward ruled by Big Nurse—a monumental matriarch who keeps her men in line by some highly original disciplinary measures: Nursey doesn't spank, but oh that electric shock treatment! Into the ward swaggers McMurphy, a lusty gambling man with white whales on his shorts and the psychology of unmarried nurses down to a science. He leads the men on to a series of major victories, including the substitution of recent issues of Nugget and Playboy for some dated McCall's. The fatuity of hospital utilitarianism, that alcohol-swathed brand of idiocy responsible for the custom of waking patients from a deep sleep in order to administer barbiturates, is countered by McMurphy's simple, articulate, logic. This is a thoroughly enthralling, brilliantly tempered novel, peopled by at least two unforgettable characters. (Big Nurse is custom tailored for a busty Eileen Heckert.)
Though extension is possible, make no mistake about it; this is a ward and not a microcosm.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1962
ISBN: 0451163966
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1961
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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