Historically and politically compelling, yet the three-soul plot device is contrived.
Revolutionary and domestic politics collide in this tale of a woman’s ghost attempting to understand her life decisions and make amends for her transgressions.
Set against the Chinese civil war, Chang’s debut novel explores the frustrations of intelligent women valued only for beauty and obedience. A young woman’s consciousness awakens at her own funeral, surrounded by her three souls: her yin, manifesting as a dancing schoolgirl; her yang, manifesting as an elderly scholar; and her han, manifesting as a silhouette of light. Until she can remember her sins, she cannot ascend to the afterlife and reincarnation; she runs the risk of becoming a hungry ghost, roaming the Earth for eternity. To help her remember, Song Leiyin’s souls make her watch her own life unfold again, beginning with the evening of her sister’s engagement party, the night she met Yen Hanchin. Born into a traditional and prosperous family, the three Song daughters realize their dreams are circumscribed. Leiyin’s eldest sister, Gaoyin, already married, worries that if she doesn’t conceive a child soon, her husband will take a concubine. Leiyin’s second sister, Sueyin, is betrothed to a well-connected young man far more interested in opium than the business world. Leiyin’s eldest brother, Changyin, waits in the wings to become the family patriarch, while her second brother, Tongyin, squanders his educational opportunities at college to drink and mingle with friends. Leiyin herself longs to continue school, to become a teacher, to make a difference in China. When she meets Hanchin—poet, translator and political agitator—Leiyin’s aspirations gain a romantic edge. Her plans to escape her father’s oppressive household, however, quickly land her in an unexpected marriage. Still, her ambitions and her desire for Hanchin simmer, waiting for a startlingly tragic opportunity. Now, her ghost must find a way to repair the damage wrought.
Historically and politically compelling, yet the three-soul plot device is contrived.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-229319-0
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2014
Wide-eyed genre clichés alternate with steamy boudoir scenes, in a romance sure to delight readers who can't find paperbacks...
An unquiet ghost stalks her living descendants, seeking vengeance for a long-ago betrayal.
Cassandra de Warenne, who writes historical novels, had never heard of her ancestral relative Isabel de la Barca until the fateful night of her sister's swanky party for her rich and famous friends. Tracey de Warenne just wanted to give her pals first peek at a priceless antique ruby necklace which is to be auctioned off by Sotheby's, where she more or less works. (All these characters inhabit the moneyed dreamland where those mythical beings known as jet-setters and playboys still flourish.) But Tracey's latest flame, an "internationally-renowned" professor of medieval studies named Antonio de la Barca, points out that the necklace is identical to one adorning the snowy bosom of Isabel de la Barca in a portrait dated 1554. And Antonio adds that Isabel's maiden name, before she married into his illustrious family, was de Warenne. Cass is intrigued . . . and instantly smitten with the darkly handsome Antonio. Strange things begin to happen that very night, causing one and all to pack their bags to head for Antonio's spooky family castle in Spain. Yes, intones Joyce (The Third Heiress, 1999), the place is crumbling and sinister; and yes, the eyes in the portraits seem to follow everyone around. Ere long, Isabel's malevolent spirit raises all kinds of ghostly hell, and eventually possesses Tracey, who is so blond, chic, and thin that she represents an irresistible target. Cass must fight her very own sister practically to the death-but not before enjoying several emollient bouts of sex with the ever-smoldering Antonio. Guess who wins the good sister/bad sister shriekfest.
Wide-eyed genre clichés alternate with steamy boudoir scenes, in a romance sure to delight readers who can't find paperbacks featuring white-clad damsels fleeing moonlit Gothic towers anywhere in their local supermarkets.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-26247-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The whips-and-chains crowd will love it. For others: caveat emptor.
Images of the Marquis de Sade’s bedchamber and Andy Warhol’s Factory will undoubtedly assail readers of this defiantly outré third novel by Gooch, the biographer of Frank O’Hara (City Poet, 1993) and author of such in-your-face fiction as The Golden Age of Promiscuity (1996).
The narrator is a nameless youth from a small Pennsylvania town who finds an objective correlative for his compulsive self-abasement in a Scranton museum’s “sacred voodoo chamber” exhibit. Abused and exploited by schoolmates and others (to whom he is, simply, “Zombie”), he leaves his scandalized, sorrowful parents, and—in a rather blatant imitation of James Purdy’s famous first novel, Malcolm—moves on to New York City. Thereafter, the story becomes a series of searches for his true “master” and encounters with unconventional reality instructors and benefactors: a drug-addicted physician who insists he be addressed as “Sir Edward,” a muscle-bound TV talk-show impresario (“Control Freak”), the Son of God Himself (as worshipped by “the Jesus Men,” who hold a rally in Washington’s RFK Stadium), genuine-article “zombie masters” met during a Haitian visit, and, after Zombie’s return to Manhattan, miscellaneous denizens of the lurid “club Crypt,” where people from his past mysteriously appear. (Perhaps—though Gooch doesn’t spell this out—he’s seeing his life pass before him, just as he’s about to leave it.) The novel isn’t nearly as awful as it sounds: Gooch writes crisp, surprisingly evocative straightforward sentences, and has found a resonant, troubling metaphor for the kind of passivity and self-loathing capable of shading into the destructive recesses of sadomasochism. If you like Anne Tyler and Jan Karon, you may want to pass on Zombie 00. Still, this is, in its uniquely empathetic and perceptive way, really a rather successful exploration of a hapless life lived on the psychosexual razor’s edge.
The whips-and-chains crowd will love it. For others: caveat emptor.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2000
ISBN: 1-58567-043-X
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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