Ri’s incessant networking question—is someone “knowable?”—applies mainly to herself in this absorbing but decidedly...
An enigmatic real-life Sino-Japanese film star, Ri Koran, remains a cipher after three self-absorbed narrators fail to illuminate her, in the latest from Buruma (Journalism/Bard Coll.; Murder in Amsterdam, 2006, etc.).
Buruma has written nonfiction works on China, Japan and jihadism. He displays his erudition on all three topics in this novel. The narrators of the book’s three sections—a homosexual American censor, Vanoven, stationed in postwar Tokyo; Sato Daisuke, a talent agent/private eye in Japanese-occupied Manchuria; and a screenwriter (also surnamed Sato) who joins the ’70s-era Japanese Red Army movement—track Ri’s serpentine CV through the thick, sometimes opaque, scrim of their own preoccupations. Born Yamaguchi Yoshiko in Manchuria to a Japanese couple, Ri was educated in Chinese private schools. Gifted with soulful eyes and a soprano to match, Ri passes as Chinese and stars in the film China Nights. The movie—and Ri—come to symbolize Japan’s efforts, while invading China and installing a puppet empire in Manchuria, to couch its imperialistic agenda in pan-Asian peace platitudes. After World War II, Ri renounces her Chinese persona and seeks fame as a Hollywood and Tokyo movie actress. When her marriage and career in Tokyo fall apart, due to a U.S.-sanctioned regime change reinstating war criminals, Ri reinvents herself as a TV journalist and host of a housewife-targeted news show. She hires young Sato, former crewmember on pornographic pinku films turned TV news-writer turned Japanese student militant and Palestinian sympathizer. Old Sato’s section, mostly set in Manchuria, detracts most from the novel’s focus. His story lingers on his obsession with another Yoshiko, a cross-dressing siren whose treachery nets him a prison stay and torture. Vanoven, though an engaging confidant, fails to vivify Ri as a protagonist. Young Sato morphs into a Palestinian martyr/hero and Ri gets lost in the ensuing Kamikaze parallels.
Ri’s incessant networking question—is someone “knowable?”—applies mainly to herself in this absorbing but decidedly un-novelistic portrayal of cross-cultural adventurers.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59420-194-3
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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