Somewhat too cute for comfort, but, still, a good tale with a nice slant on geography and the pop scene.
Danger lurks in the well-lit corners of Tokyo’s immaculately clean streets, and it takes a teen-mag journalist to unravel the mysteries of this inscrutable world.
Billy Chaka is reporter for the Cleveland-based Asian rock magazine Youth in Asia (the sister publication of the e-zine Generasia X), and he knows Japan inside and out, having established a reputation for himself there as “the hard-boiled laureate of the literate teen.” He was even made the subject of an action film (Wildman for Geisha!) in which he rescues a young woman from the clutches of the Tokyo mob. Billy hated the film so much that he assaulted its director, and, as a result, his editor sent him off to Hokkaido on a mandatory “vacation.” He doesn’t get much rest: Shortly after his arrival at the Hotel Kitty (each room complete with its own cat), the night porter dies in his arms—only minutes before Billy’s editor calls to tell him that Yoshi, the lead singer of Japan’s most popular group Saint Arrow, has overdosed in a Tokyo love hotel. The chase is on! Back in Tokyo, Billy looks up his old friend Olga (a Swedish stripper at the Purloined Kitten Club who knew Yoshi) and tries to get the inside story on Yoshi’s final days. He also hooks up with the brass at Seppuku Records (Yoshi’s label), who try to commission him to write a biography of the band. But this turns out to be more than your garden-variety Hendrix-style overdose. For one thing, several of the Seppuku directors have ties to the Tokyo mafia. For another, Billy begins to suspect some connection between Yoshi’s death and that of the night porter in the Hotel Kitty. By the time several more corpses (“popsicles”) are discovered in Hokkaido, Billy knows all is not well. The question is whether he can get to the bottom of things in time.
Somewhat too cute for comfort, but, still, a good tale with a nice slant on geography and the pop scene.Pub Date: April 16, 2002
ISBN: 0-380-81292-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2002
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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