Trying a bit too hard for a broad-sweeping majesty, Nguyen’s first fiction works best when confined to the more intimate...
A fablelike tale set in turn-of-the-century Vietnam offers intrigue, revenge, a treasure map, and undying love, in a sprawling confection from memoirist Nguyen (The Unwanted, 2000).
At seven, Dan Nguyen (loosely based on the author’s grandfather) becomes married to Ven, twenty years his senior, poor, illiterate, and essentially sold into marriage-cum-nannyhood to care for her young husband. Though first wife to the heir of the Nguyen fortune, Ven finds herself serving, as tradition dictates, Dan’s three mothers and working in the rice fields. When Dan’s father and his first two wives are beheaded for treason, Ven hatches a plan of revenge that will allow her young husband to regain the family name and fortune. The death of Master Nguyen was the plot of the greedy town magistrate, who hopes to locate the Nguyen buried treasure—half of the map showing its location was tattooed on Master Nguyen’s back. As the evil magistrate searches for the other half, wrongly told it’s tattooed on young Dan’s back, Ven decides the safest place to hide him is in the magistrate’s own house. She sells him, and he becomes the slave/companion of the magistrate’s granddaughter, Tai May. The two grow up, they fall in love, and Dan loses all interest in exacting revenge on Tai May’s family. When the lovers are separated, Dan flees to the capital, where he becomes the royal embroiderer. From there, the tale wanders down many paths, giving a broader picture but weakening the reader’s attachment to Dan and Tai May, who become just two more figures in the ongoing story. That, along with occasional overblown prose, weakens an old-fashioned romance of Vietnam.
Trying a bit too hard for a broad-sweeping majesty, Nguyen’s first fiction works best when confined to the more intimate aspects of its character’s lives.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2002
ISBN: 0-316-28441-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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