Although it ends on a half-heartedly optimistic note, the novel leaves a bitter aftertaste of unresolved anger.
Idemitsu has written an autobiographical first novel about a young Japanese woman who comes to America to study and stays to marry, raise a child, and find her identity as a woman caught between two cultures.
The four daughters of extremely wealthy Japanese businessman Morimasa Morimoto grow up believing it is “their duty to devote themselves to him” although he and his wife, Sadako, pay them little attention. The eldest, smartest daughter, Hiroko, moves to New York promising to become a successful artist. The second and third daughters, sweet, pretty Eiko and the usually hostile Fusako, marry to please their father. While Idemitsu moves frequently into flashbacks to flesh out the stories of the individual Morimoto women and show the ways in which each is emotionally damaged, the novel primarily focuses on the evolution of introverted youngest daughter Sakiko. While attending college at UCLA in 1964, she meets Paul, an artist and teacher. When she becomes pregnant, she reluctantly has the baby to keep Paul in her life although she fears her family’s reaction. She marries Paul in a passive trance before the baby’s birth. Her sisters in Japan voice their disapproval, her mother doesn’t respond at all, but her father sends cash. Having a baby, Sakiko feels needed for the first time. She tries to navigate the seemingly hostile white American world while remembering various painful moments from her Japanese childhood, including her mother’s neglect, Fusako’s cruelty, and the instance of physical assault every coming-of-age story seems to require lately. Gradually she grows more independent (although family money means she's never at financial risk). Meanwhile, Paul’s character remains amorphous. He pursues an affair with Sakiko’s sister Hiroko, perhaps the novel’s most fragile character, whose desire to please her father overwhelms whatever artistic talent she may have. Yet he genuinely seems to care for Sakiko and wants her to grow stronger, even admonishing her to learn to say “no.” Neither Sakiko nor the reader can tell if he is a womanizer with sensitive pretensions or someone more complex.
Although it ends on a half-heartedly optimistic note, the novel leaves a bitter aftertaste of unresolved anger.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63405-958-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Chin Music Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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