An overwrought account of first gay love, from the North Carolinian playwright and novelist (Winter Birds, 1994), whose ornately lyrical style requires a firmer foundation than is provided by his perilously shapeless plot. Bookworm Nathan, a high-school sophomore, is as lonely as he is bright. The only child of a prodigiously disturbed southern family, he's subjected to unremitting emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of his drunkard father while his morbidly religious mother looks passively on. As the perennial new kid in townNathan's father is a salesman, the family moves around a lot Nathan is used to having few friends, and it is at first his solitude as much as his teenage libido that responds to Roy Connelly, the boy next door who takes Nathan under his wing and introduces him to his classmates at school. Although Roy is two years ahead of Nathan, Nathan becomes Roy's tutor andalmost simultaneouslyhis lover. The brutality of Nathan's family life makes his need for some kind of physical or emotional escape patently clear from the start, but Roy is more of an enigma: He's a seemingly well-adjusted heterosexual with a normal family and a girlfriend, so it's not at all clear what brings him into the younger boy's ken, and this want of motive makes him appear all the more mysterious and ethereal in Nathan's eyes. This ethereality moves beyond the realm of metaphor toward the story's close, however, when the familiar tragedy of star-crossed lovers is surmounted by a magical-realist climax that comes out of nowhere and is yoked by violence onto a plot that seems unsuited for it. By turns rambling and precious, the narrative becomes incoherent by the end. A disappointing second from this award- winning young writer. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-56512-106-6
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
With lantern-lit tales of old China, a rich humanity, and an acute ear for bicultural tuning, a splendid first novel—one...
An inordinately moving, electric exploration of two warring cultures fused in love, focused on the lives of four Chinese women—who emigrated, in their youth, at various times, to San Francisco—and their very American 30-ish daughters.
Tan probes the tension of love and often angry bewilderment as the older women watch their daughters "as from another shore," and the daughters struggle to free themselves from maddening threads of arcane obligation. More than the gap between generations, more than the dwindling of old ways, the Chinese mothers most fear that their own hopes and truths—the secret gardens of the spirit that they have cultivated in the very worst of times—will not take root. A Chinese mother's responsibility here is to "give [my daughter] my spirit." The Joy Luck Club, begun in 1939 San Francisco, was a re-creation of the Club founded by Suyuan Woo in a beleaguered Chinese city. There, in the stench of starvation and death, four women told their "good stories," tried their luck with mah-jongg, laughed, and "feasted" on scraps. Should we, thought Suyuan, "wait for death or choose our own happiness?" Now, the Chinese women in America tell their stories (but not to their daughters or to one another): in China, an unwilling bride uses her wits, learns that she is "strong. . .like the wind"; another witnesses the suicide of her mother; and there are tales of terror, humiliation and despair. One recognizes fate but survives. But what of the American daughters—in turn grieved, furious, exasperated, amused ("You can't ever tell a Chinese mother to shut up")? The daughters, in their confessional chapters, have attempted childhood rebellions—like the young chess champion; ever on maternal display, who learned that wiles of the chessboard did not apply when opposing Mother, who had warned her: "Strongest wind cannot be seen." Other daughters—in adulthood, in crises, and drifting or upscale life-styles—tilt with mothers, one of whom wonders: "How can she be her own person? When did I give her up?"
With lantern-lit tales of old China, a rich humanity, and an acute ear for bicultural tuning, a splendid first novel—one that matches the vigor and sensitivity of Maxine Hong Kingston (The Warrior Woman, 1976; China Men, 1980) in her tributes to the abundant heritage of Chinese-Americans.Pub Date: March 22, 1989
ISBN: 0143038095
Page Count: -
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1989
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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