A panoramic whirl through Chinese history in a first novel inspired by a Chinese grandmother who was granted that most ambiguous of wishes—to live in interesting times. A granddaughter of the first democratically elected vice- president of China, Li takes her family's remarkable saga and gives it a fictional spin as she recounts the story of Bittersweet, a peasant farmer's daughter who becomes the wife of a famous Chinese leader, endures civil and world wars, and celebrates her hundredth birthday as the students protest in Tiananmen Square. From birth, Bittersweet seems marked for great things: she's a fourth daughter who should have been killed at birth, but her vitality so impresses her mother that she spares the child—a decision reinforced by the fortuneteller's prediction that a good, long life lies ahead. The child thrives, survives a near-fatal illness, and, defying custom, marries a young man, Delin, whom she chooses herself. Delin, a farmer's son turned soldier, advances rapidly to become a military hero, an ally of Chiang Kai-shek's, and eventually vice-president. Bittersweet, eponymously named, shared his glory but not his heart, for though she gives him a son, Delin soon takes a second wife. Bittersweet's is a story of survival, of courageously adapting to difficult circumstances that include the upheavals of war, exile in Hong Kong, and, with her son and his family, the US. After the Cultural Revolution, there's a return to China, where Bittersweet attains that great objective of Chinese happiness—``four generations living under the same roof.'' Accompanying the story are digressions into Chinese history and custom that are sometimes so insistent that Bittersweet's remarkable life and character are lost in the intrusion. Promising and certainly instructive, but a bit of a bumpy ride.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-8048-1777-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1992
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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