Fine work almost to the end, then a bitter disappointment.
Another taut suburban thriller from Fielding (Whispers and Lies, 2002, etc.), this one a psychological exploration of a mother whose daughter disappears.
On Tuesday, Cindy meets friends for lunch so they can discuss movie picks for the upcoming Toronto Film Festival, goes to her niece’s bridal fitting, has supper with a surprisingly charming blind date. She has no idea that her morning spat with daughter Julia would be their last, for as the narrator ominously opines, “great calamity, like great evil, often springs from the womb of the hopelessly mundane.” Julia, a selfish and hard 21-year-old beauty, showed up at her big audition with a famed Hollywood director, but failed to return home that Tuesday night, or the next night, or the next. Cindy is understandably frantic, imagining the worst—so easy to imagine, since the worst is the subject of every popular TV show and film—wondering what happened to her elder daughter. There are a few suspects: the director; Julia’s ex-boyfriend, a writer who’s taken naughty photos of Julia and written a grisly tale of torture about her; Duncan, the boyfriend of Julia’s younger sister Heather; and Ryan, Cindy’s next-door neighbor, a handsome architect with a colicky infant and a suicidally depressed wife. Cindy accuses and confronts everyone, knowing that as each day goes by there is less and less chance of finding Julia. She silently berates herself: she is a bad mother, she drove Julia away (just like when the teenager chose to live with her father), only she can save her daughter. Fielding is a skillful storyteller, but all the fine-tuned details do little to save this otherwise compelling tale from its own ending, an intentionally “surprising” and “shocking” finale that nullifies the previous 350 pages. Akin to the shopworn “it was all a dream” ploy, this about-face simultaneously cheats and hoodwinks readers of a true catharsis.
Fine work almost to the end, then a bitter disappointment.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7434-4629-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
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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