Clarke (Al Capsella and the Watchdogs, 1991) strews this dark comedy with caricatured adults and older Melbourne teenagers clinging to adolescence. After another Saturday night making the club scene, Jasper (who is 19 and a brick salesman by day) stumbles home, losing his mate Vinny somewhere along the way. He assumes Vinny will show up, but he’s wrong; Vinny is not at any of his friends’ homes, doesn’t pick up his car from Jasper, and doesn’t show up for his job at the car wash on Sunday. An anxious hunt begins. Using at least ten points of view, plus a variety of ominous dreams, nameless feelings of dread, and the like, Clarke creates a patchy, faintly suspenseful tale in which the cast’s love lives, private yearnings, and apprehension at the looming prospect of adulthood share the front seat with the central mystery. Yet neither the satire nor the cautionary message are delivered with any particular zing. Readers may have dismissed the entire episode by the time Vinny reappears late Sunday night, groggy but unharmed, having blithely accepted a ride and a spiked drink from a seemingly inoffensive stranger, and woken up on a train with no memory of the past 12 hours. (glossary) (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-6152-5
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
Namioka (Den of the White Fox, 1997, etc.) offers readers a glimpse of the ritual of foot-binding, and a surprising heroine whose life is determined by her rejection of that ritual. Ailin is spirited—her family thinks uncontrollable—even at age five, in her family’s compound in China in 1911, she doesn’t want to have her feet bound, especially after Second Sister shows Ailin her own bound feet and tells her how much it hurts. Ailin can see already how bound feet will restrict her movements, and prevent her from running and playing. Her father takes the revolutionary step of permitting her to leave her feet alone, even though the family of Ailin’s betrothed then breaks off the engagement. Ailin goes to the missionary school and learns English; when her father dies and her uncle cuts off funds for tuition, she leaves her family to become a nanny for an American missionary couple’s children. She learns all the daily household chores that were done by servants in her own home, and finds herself, painfully, cut off from her own culture and separate from the Americans. At 16, she decides to go with the missionaries when they return to San Francisco, where she meets and marries another Chinese immigrant who starts his own restaurant. The metaphor of things bound and unbound is a ribbon winding through this vivid narrative; the story moves swiftly, while Ailin is a brave and engaging heroine whose difficult choices reflect her time and her gender. (Fiction. 9-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-32666-1
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
Revisiting characters from The Cook’s Family (1998), Yep again explores personal and cultural conflicts arising between the generations in a Chinese-American family. Suddenly saddled with caring for four younger siblings after a wealthy businessman hires her widowed mother as a governess—or amah—for his daughter, Stephanie, Amy Chin is forced to miss several ballet rehearsals for Cinderella, to listen to glowing accounts of Stephanie’s sophistication, and to accept expensive clothing and other gifts from her. While gaining new insight into how Cinderella’s stepsisters must have felt, Amy’s understandable resentment is compounded by the news that Stephanie will be moving in while her father is away on a trip. Yep builds that feeling to fever pitch, then dispels it by casting Stephanie as a lonely child hurt by one parent’s death and the other’s neglect; becoming friends, Stephanie and Amy clear the air and mend some fences with their well-meaning parents in a climactic face-off. The characters, most of them familiar from previous appearances, are distinct if not particularly complex, the San Francisco setting is vividly drawn, and the issues are laid out in plain terms and tidily resolved. It’s formulaic, but not entirely superficial. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-23040-8
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
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