A naïve and somewhat raw debut, but with a fresh charm that makes up for much of the awkward pacing and rambling narrative.
The lives of Manhattan’s bicycle messengers, as seen through the eyes of a young immigrant woman.
Rarely noticed by outsiders unless they are the victims (or instigators) of traffic accidents, New York’s bicycle messengers form a kind of urban tribe with traditions and rituals all their own. Overwhelmingly male and young, the messengers are usually black or Hispanic kids from the rougher neighborhoods who scrape together a living with a set of wheels and a pair of strong legs, although you can find middle-class refugees (usually aspiring artists or actors) in their ranks as well. One of these is Whitey, rebellious son of a prosperous and staid southern family who dropped out of his Ivy League college to live on the Lower East Side and expand his consciousness through poetry and Eastern mysticism. Resolutely single in the true tradition of all outlaw geniuses, Whitey finds himself attracted to Yurika, a teenager who works in her uncle’s grocery in the East Village. Half-Korean and half-Japanese, Yurika is resented by her Korean aunt as standoffish and superior, but she works dutifully at the store and gradually improves her English with the help of her cousin Suzie and messengers like Whitey who come to flirt with her. She even (against her aunt and uncle’s wishes) goes out with Whitey, but she’s more attracted to Hector, another messenger who works for the same agency. While Whitey tries to win Yurika and find a congenial way of living in what he takes to be a decadent and commercial world, Yurika is more and more entranced by the openness of American life and excited by the prospect of putting her traditional Asian reticence behind her. Altogether, it’s a classic immigrant’s saga of newcomers taking up the American Dream that has been rejected by natives.
A naïve and somewhat raw debut, but with a fresh charm that makes up for much of the awkward pacing and rambling narrative.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-31245-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2003
Another artistic triumph, and surefire bestseller, for this fearless writer.
This Afghan-American author follows his debut (The Kite Runner, 2003) with a fine risk-taking novel about two victimized but courageous Afghan women.
Mariam is a bastard. Her mother was a housekeeper for a rich businessman in Herat, Afghanistan, until he impregnated and banished her. Mariam’s childhood ended abruptly when her mother hanged herself. Her father then married off the 15-year-old to Rasheed, a 40ish shoemaker in Kabul, hundreds of miles away. Rasheed is a deeply conventional man who insists that Mariam wear a burqa, though many women are going uncovered (it’s 1974). Mariam lives in fear of him, especially after numerous miscarriages. In 1987, the story switches to a neighbor, nine-year-old Laila, her playmate Tariq and her parents. It’s the eighth year of Soviet occupation—bad for the nation, but good for women, who are granted unprecedented freedoms. Kabul’s true suffering begins in 1992. The Soviets have gone, and rival warlords are tearing the city apart. Before he leaves for Pakistan, Tariq and Laila make love; soon after, her parents are killed by a rocket. The two storylines merge when Rasheed and Mariam shelter the solitary Laila. Rasheed has his own agenda; the 14-year-old will become his second wife, over Mariam’s objections, and give him an heir, but to his disgust Laila has a daughter, Aziza; in time, he’ll realize Tariq is the father. The heart of the novel is the gradual bonding between the girl-mother and the much older woman. Rasheed grows increasingly hostile, even frenzied, after an escape by the women is foiled. Relief comes when Laila gives birth to a boy, but it’s short-lived. The Taliban are in control; women must stay home; Rasheed loses his business; they have no food; Aziza is sent to an orphanage. The dramatic final section includes a murder and an execution. Despite all the pain and heartbreak, the novel is never depressing; Hosseini barrels through each grim development unflinchingly, seeking illumination.
Another artistic triumph, and surefire bestseller, for this fearless writer.Pub Date: May 22, 2007
ISBN: 1-59448-950-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
"This soil," concludes the young narrator of this quiet chronicle of garrotted innocence, "is bad for all kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear." And among the exclusions of white rural Ohio, echoed by black respectability, is ugly, black, loveless, twelve-year-old Pecola. But in a world where blue-eyed gifts are clucked over and admired, and the Pecolas are simply not seen, there is always the possibility of the dream and wish—for blue eyes. Born of a mother who adjusted her life to the clarity and serenity of white households and "acquired virtues that were easy to maintain" and a father, Cholly, stunted by early rejections and humiliations, Pecola just might have been loved—for in raping his daughter Cholly did at least touch her. But "Love is never better than the lover," and with the death of her baby, the child herself, accepting absolutely the gift of blue eyes from a faith healer (whose perverse interest in little girls does not preclude understanding), inches over into madness. A skillful understated tribute to the fall of a sparrow for whose small tragedy there was no watching eye.
Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1970
ISBN: 0375411550
Page Count: -
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970
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