Thorough research and stylish execution make for a striking tour de force.
A U.S. airman dies and finds himself in limbo after being shot down over Hiroshima in Harmon’s novel (The Paranormalist, 2019, etc.).
Bombardier Micah Lund’s B-29 is on a mission to drop propaganda leaflets over Hiroshima during the campaign against Japan in World War II. Having lost his brother to Japanese fire on Guadalcanal, Micah is set on revenge, openly declaring that “hate doesn’t begin to describe how I feel.” After taking flak, the plane goes down, and the crew attempt a difficult bail out. Kiyomi Oshiro, a young mother and war widow, sees an airman falling through the sky. Micah’s body lands near Kiyomi, and, to the disgust of the attending Japanese military police, she whispers a prayer for him. Micah learns he isn’t in heaven but limbo—a “black void”—when he awakes and discovers a group of soldiers laughing at his dead body. This only intensifies his hatred for the Japanese, yet he is strangely drawn to Kiyomi and follows her. He soon encounters others in limbo and learns that it is possible to communicate with the living. His first thought is to relay intelligence to U.S headquarters, but his unfamiliar emotions for Kiyomi create an opposing pull. Other than the devastating reality that the atomic bomb will be dropped, the reader is given little indication of how the plot will unfold. As Micah observes Japanese civilians, he begins to understand their suffering, as in this elegant description of Kiyomi bathing: “Dirt and grime fell off in black rivulets.…As she eased into the steaming water, he noticed the tautness of her skin, how her stomach concaved and her ribs lay exposed. She’s starving to death, he thought.” The novel becomes in part a thoughtful study of how human connection can challenge racist ideology. Harmon also displays a profound understanding of Japanese culture, drawing on folklore to illuminate what happens beyond the veil: “When a person dies, their soul exits the body in the shape of a bluish ball of light we call a Hitodama.” This is an extraordinarily imaginative and compelling exploration of love, death, race, and patriotism with countless unusual twists to keep the reader guessing.
Thorough research and stylish execution make for a striking tour de force.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-578-59150-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cheerfully engaging.
From Australian Moriarty (The Last Anniversary, 2006, etc.), domestic escapism about a woman whose temporary amnesia makes her re-examine what really matters to her.
Alice wakes from what she thinks is a dream, assuming she is a recently married 29-year-old expecting her first child. Actually she is 39, the mother of three and in the middle of an acrimonious custody battle with her soon-to-be ex-husband Nick. She’s fallen off her exercise bike, and the resulting bump on her head has not only erased her memory of the last 10 years but has also taken her psychologically back to a younger, more easygoing self at odds with the woman she gathers she has become. While Alice-at-29 is loving and playful if lacking ambition or self-confidence, Alice-at-39 is a highly efficient if too tightly wound supermom. She is also thin and rich since Nick now heads the company where she remembers him struggling in an entry-level position. Alice-at-29 cannot conceive that she and Nick would no longer be rapturously in love or that she and her adored older sister Elisabeth could be estranged, and she is shocked that her shy mother has married Nick’s bumptious father and taken up salsa dancing. She neither remembers nor recognizes her three children, each given a distinct if slightly too cute personality. Nor does she know what to make of the perfectly nice boyfriend Alice-at-39 has acquired. As memory gradually returns, Alice-at-29 initially misinterprets the scattered images and flashes of emotion, especially those concerning Gina, a woman who evidently caused the rift with Nick. Alice-at-29 assumes Gina was Nick’s mistress, only to discover that Gina was her best friend. Gina died in a freak car accident and in her honor, Alice-at-39 has organized mothers from the kids’ school to bake the largest lemon meringue pie on record. But Alice-at-29 senses that Gina may not have been a completely positive influence. Moriarty handles the two Alice consciousnesses with finesse and also delves into infertility issues through Elizabeth’s diary.
Cheerfully engaging.Pub Date: June 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-15718-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Amy Einhorn/Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
A familiar tale of upper-middle-class ennui.
Over the course of a single summer, a middle-aged Manhattan couple grapples with the state of their marriage and their lives.
When Alice and Peter met, he was a young psychoanalyst and she was an even younger biophysicist. Soon, they had twin daughters. Now, he is an older psychoanalyst, she is still studying the complexities of starling flock dynamics, the twins are away at Berkeley, and the marriage is on the rocks. They have retreated into separate worlds, bored by themselves and each other. Peter has his work. For Alice, the only source of refuge is her beloved Dachshund-Chihuahua mutt named Maebelle, and when the novel opens on Memorial Day weekend, Maebelle has gone missing. Alice is devastated; Peter is annoyed. Alice has a tryst with a man she meets through a “Manhattan Lost Dog” Facebook group. Peter has escalating fantasies about a beautiful young patient. Both of them agonize, separately, over their mutual indiscretions. Sometimes, they go out to dinner. Every unhappy family may be unhappy in its own way, but it feels as though we’ve heard this story before. It is an intimate domestic drama presented without subtlety; every action has a clear and obvious motivation, and every motivation is explained at length. Alice’s infidelity, we’re told, is not just about sex, but rather because “she’d locate a shred of her former self.” Peter can’t stop fantasizing about the patient, he explains, because she reminds him “of so much I lack.” LeFavour (Lights On, Rats Out, 2017) offers an empathetic and detailed portrait of a marriage, but not—with the exception of one explosive scene toward the novel’s end—an especially insightful one.
A familiar tale of upper-middle-class ennui.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4888-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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