Moody and compelling.
An atmospheric thriller set in a Hong Kong convulsed by student protests and China’s heavy-handed response to them circa 2019.
Adrian Gyle is a veteran British reporter, a 20-year resident of Hong Kong who has access to the city's elites thanks to the charming, reckless Jimmy Tang, his old university friend. The plot revolves around the disappearance of a young woman Adrian meets through Jimmy; she’s both a child of wealth and influence and a fearless frontline street protester (her legs bear splotches from the blue dye authorities fire from water cannons to disperse and identify activists). But to call this a mystery may mislead a bit. The book is like a whodunit turned inside out, with what might usually be background—the precisely and evocatively drawn setting, especially—at center and the plot mostly crowding in around the edges. Hong Kong comes fiercely alive on the page, and Osborne’s command of complex history, geography, and politics (and poetry) is nuanced and sure-handed. He captures, too, Gyle’s feeling of wistful alienhood, the jadedness that approaches but never quite gets to cynicism. Some of the detail—especially about fashion, food, and drink—does pall a bit, but Osborne’s strategy is mostly successful: The reader senses early on that the disappearance, like the larger mystery it’s embedded in, the case of Hong Kong’s fate, won’t—can’t—have a simple solution. Decisive conclusions, it seems implied, require an arrogance like that Tacitus referred to (Osborne quotes it here) when he wrote about invaders who “make a desert and call it peace.” Solutions belong only to those who can ruthlessly enforce them, and the reader—like the battered-from-all-sides Gyle and like the ordinary residents of Hong Kong—can have no illusions about that.
Moody and compelling.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-24232-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.
A British widow travels to Ibiza and learns that it’s never too late to have a happy life.
In a world that seems to be getting more unstable by the moment, Haig’s novels are a steady ship in rough seas, offering a much-needed positive message. In works like the bestselling The Midnight Library (2020), he reminds us that finding out what you truly love and where you belong in the universe are the foundations of building a better existence. His latest book continues this upbeat messaging, albeit in a somewhat repetitive and facile way. Retired British schoolteacher Grace Winters discovers that an old acquaintance has died and left her a ramshackle home in Ibiza. A widow who lost her only child years earlier, Grace is at first reluctant to visit the house, because, at 72, she more or less believes her chance for happiness is over—but when she rouses herself to travel to the island, she discovers the opposite is true. A mystery surrounds her friend’s death involving a roguish islander, his activist daughter, an internationally famous DJ, and a strange glow in the sea that acts as a powerful life force and upends Grace’s ideas of how the cosmos works. Framed as a response to a former student’s email, the narrative follows Grace’s journey from skeptic (she was a math teacher, after all) to believer in the possibility of magic as she learns to move on from the past. Her transformation is the book’s main conflict, aside from a protest against an evil developer intent on destroying Ibiza’s natural beauty. The outcome is never in doubt, and though the story often feels stretched to the limit—this novel could have easily been a novella—the author’s insistence on the power of connection to change lives comes through loud and clear.
Haig’s positive message will keep his fans happy.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2024
ISBN: 9780593489277
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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