by Jacob Acerbi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2020
An evocative but sometimes turgid portrait of a troubled soul in a bewildering land.
An American expatriate in China encounters filth, fraud, and fickle women in this fictionalized memoir.
Acerbi frames his book as a third-person narrative about “Jim,” an American student who travels to the Chinese city of Wuhan in 2013, ostensibly to study at Wuhan University but mainly to reunite with his long-distance girlfriend, Lan. Lan promptly dumps Jim to kick off his creeping disenchantment with all things Chinese. He’s also appalled by the dirt and disorder, the ubiquitous construction work, the “dense layer of black grime” in commercial kitchens, the “odor of stagnant sewage,” the rats trundling about in restaurants, the scams that hustlers run on him, and the baffling disorganization of the Chinese bureaucracy (one visa office functionary does nothing but play video games). Then there’s Jim’s vexed experiences with other Chinese women, who are friendly and even forward thanks to his barbarian virility but then blow him off when things get serious. He gets engaged to Dina, a university staffer entranced by the sweat that “glistened from the rippled surfaces of his lean muscularity,” but she also starts a relationship with her boss, Peng, that Jim thinks is sexual. A Kafkaesque melodrama ensues: Jim breaks into Dina’s room looking for signs of infidelity, imagines she has been brainwashed, sends her threatening emails—“I will tell your father and mother that every day you go with your manager to a hotel to have sexual intercourse”—and contemplates murdering Peng. Jim is eventually questioned by police and kicked off campus. Acerbi’s well-observed panorama of Chinese culture brims with shrewd insights—“calling the police is snitching, breaking the unspoken code that conflict resolution should occur through hierarchical relationships or sheer force if need be, but never through official channels”—and vivid scenes. (At an internet cafe, “emaciated addicts of video games…frittered away their nights here pretending to be muscled superheroes in pathetic fantasy lands….They burned everything with their cigarettes, from the seats to the tables to the computers’ USB ports.”) Unfortunately, the narrative often bogs down like a diary in the details of Jim’s aimless socializing. His stalking of Dina feels deranged but also dreary as he endlessly rehashes the eye-glazing minutiae of his obsessions. Readers may grow tired waiting for Jim to realize how bad his own behavior has been.
An evocative but sometimes turgid portrait of a troubled soul in a bewildering land.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73445-441-3
Page Count: 267
Publisher: LSI Holdings, LLC
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Barbara Kingsolver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
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Best Books Of 2022
New York Times Bestseller
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
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SEEN & HEARD
by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
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New York Times Bestseller
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
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