A torridly paced read that hastens to its foreordained conclusion impeded by the slightest subtlety or nuance in handling...
The heavy-handed nightmare of a squeaky-clean divorced dad’s ordeal when an innocent photo ends up getting him charged with child abuse.
Playing with his six-year-old daughter Penny while she’s taking a bath, novelist Stephen Barrow takes some photos of her shampoo-spiked hairdo and snaps one last shot while she’s mooning him. He thinks he’s out of film, but he isn’t, and the zealous clerk at the drugstore that develops the roll is only the first of a long line of concerned citizens—justice-system bureaucrats, incompetent journalists, politically vulnerable jurists, and experts determined to ride the gravy train—who railroad him into a holding cell on multiple charges of possessing a sexual performance of a child and endangering the welfare of a minor. His head spinning in disbelief and shock, Stephen is instantly barred from contact with Penny, who’s placed with her vindictive mother Ada and farmed out twice a week to child counselor Cathy Silverman, who feeds her leading questions in hope of making Columbia County District Attorney Jim Hall happy and fattening her own bank account. Except for sympathetic Flynt Adams, his court-appointed attorney, and Theresa Mulholland, the sensitive reporter initially assigned to cover the case, everybody who crosses Stephen’s path assumes this is “a clear-cut case of abuse,” and most of the major players outside the DA’s office also seem utterly clueless about the justice system, giving Klempner (Flat Lake in Winter, 1999, etc.) the chance for lots and lots of exposition clarifying the difference between civil and criminal cases, bench and jury trials, grounds for dismissal and grounds for the not-guilty verdict that seems hopelessly out of Stephen’s reach—unless, of course, the prosecution puts Penny on the stand.
A torridly paced read that hastens to its foreordained conclusion impeded by the slightest subtlety or nuance in handling what some folks might consider a rather complicated subject.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-28303-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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