A rich, artistic novel reveals a culture obscured and unknown.
A coming-of-age story set in North Korea’s fringe Chinese community uncovers a shocking world of art and tradition suppressed underneath the country’s disciplined veneer.
To the outside world, North Korea is a gray, choreographed nation, but even under such an oppressive regime, a surprising Chinese community exists within its borders. Mickey and his family are a part of this community, and while not an identity of privilege, it does afford advantages. Though frowned upon, sometimes even punished, there is tolerance for many to work as smugglers, bringing in outside luxuries while selling off pieces of the country’s history or, at the very least, convincing fakes. Mickey toils under a harsh mentor who trains him as an artist and a forger, but his passions lean harder toward the latter. Further igniting his imagination is a painted, antique copper snuff bottle, a family heirloom that has become a talisman to him. Its counterpart was spirited away by his grandmother Lily, who left North Korea for Moscow. The alluring mystery of Lily and the other bottle moves him to seek out greater freedoms as he studies art abroad. He also helps his brother Piggy in smuggling and faces the dangers of fools, assassins, and idealists. Kim’s debut reads as much like poetry as it does prose, Mickey’s travels and ebbing naiveté recalling the novels of Kerouac—though with far less whimsy and far greater consequence. Colorful digressions into his family’s history permeate but never distract from Mickey’s travels. Characters and their experiences, even outside of the protagonist’s plotline, matter. A foolish Western woman extolling the “hardiness” of North Korean socialism isn’t presented as just caricature, and a cruel rival from Mickey’s youth grows, unseen but believably, into a co-conspirator if not a friend. Most notably Mickey’s first love, Minsu, appears sporadically but offers a luckless story that could (and should!) be a novel unto itself, her hardships reminding readers that even Mickey’s journey is not as difficult as others’.
A rich, artistic novel reveals a culture obscured and unknown.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-909979-76-5
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Crux Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy,...
Britisher Haddon debuts in the adult novel with the bittersweet tale of a 15-year-old autistic who’s also a math genius.
Christopher Boone has had some bad knocks: his mother has died (well, she went to the hospital and never came back), and soon after he found a neighbor’s dog on the front lawn, slain by a garden fork stuck through it. A teacher said that he should write something that he “would like to read himself”—and so he embarks on this book, a murder mystery that will reveal who killed Mrs. Shears’s dog. First off, though, is a night in jail for hitting the policeman who questions him about the dog (the cop made the mistake of grabbing the boy by the arm when he can’t stand to be touched—any more than he can stand the colors yellow or brown, or not knowing what’s going to happen next). Christopher’s father bails him out but forbids his doing any more “detecting” about the dog-murder. When Christopher disobeys (and writes about it in his book), a fight ensues and his father confiscates the book. In time, detective-Christopher finds it, along with certain other clues that reveal a very great deal indeed about his mother’s “death,” his father’s own part in it—and the murder of the dog. Calming himself by doing roots, cubes, prime numbers, and math problems in his head, Christopher runs away, braves a train-ride to London, and finds—his mother. How can this be? Read and see. Neither parent, if truth be told, is the least bit prepossessing or more than a cutout. Christopher, though, with pet rat Toby in his pocket and advanced “maths” in his head, is another matter indeed, and readers will cheer when, way precociously, he takes his A-level maths and does brilliantly.
A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy, moving, and likely to be a smash.Pub Date: June 17, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50945-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
Despite getting a little preachy toward the end, Leary has largely achieved a genuinely funny novel about alcoholism.
A supposedly recovering alcoholic real estate agent tells her not-exactly-trustworthy version of life in her small New England town in this tragicomic novel by Leary (Outtakes from a Marriage, 2008, etc.).
Sixty-year-old Hildy Good, a divorced realtor who has lived all her life in Wendover on the Massachusetts North Shore, proudly points to having an ancestor burned at the stake at the Salem witch trials. In fact, her party trick is to do psychic readings using subtle suggestions and observational skills honed by selling homes. At first, the novel seems to center on Hildy’s insights about her Wendover neighbors, particularly her recent client Rebecca McAllister, a high-strung young woman who has moved into a local mansion with her businessman husband and two adopted sons. Hildy witnesses Rebecca having trouble fitting in with other mothers, visiting the local psychiatrist Peter Newbold, who rents an office above Hildy’s, and winning a local horse show on her expensive new mount. Hildy is acerbically funny and insightful about her neighbors; many, like her, are from old families whose wealth has evaporated. She becomes Rebecca’s confidante about the affair Rebecca is having with Peter, whom Hildy helped baby-sit when he was a lonely child. She helps another family who needs to sell their house to afford schooling for their special needs child. She begins an affair with local handyman Frankie Getchell, with whom she had a torrid romance as a teenager. But Hildy, who has recently spent a stint in rehab and joined AA after an intervention by her grown daughters, is not quite the jolly eccentric she appears. There are those glasses of wine she drinks alone at night, those morning headaches and memory lapses that are increasing in frequency. As both Rebecca’s and Hildy’s lives spin out of control, the tone darkens until it approaches tragedy. Throughout, Hildy is original, irresistibly likable and thoroughly untrustworthy.
Despite getting a little preachy toward the end, Leary has largely achieved a genuinely funny novel about alcoholism.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-250-01554-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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