Newcomer Yoshikawa tries but fails to weave the story of a young woman’s doomed love affair in Manhattan seamlessly together with the tale of her Japanese grandmother who was once a geisha. Kiki, the narrator, is a graduate student in English at Columbia and, as the story begins, thinks she may be in love with Eric, a handsome young Jewish lawyer she met at a concert. But she is also literally haunted by Phillip, the love of her life, who was killed while climbing in the Himalayas. Kiki keeps seeing Phillip in her apartment—on the window sill, in the kitchen, on a shelf—which doesn’t help her affair with Eric, though she soon accepts his proposal of marriage. As Kiki recalls how she met Phillip, a young man born to wander and charm, and as she worries that Eric may have a fetish about Asian women, she writes imaginary letters to her grandmother Yukiko, who, now a widow, has promised to visit Kiki and her mother, Akiko, in the fall. Kiki identifies strongly with her grandmother and looks forward to hearing Yukiko herself tell the story of her life. Meanwhile, Kiki relates the tales Akiko has previously told her. Sold by her parents to a geisha house, beautiful young Yukiko used guile and sex to marry a rich businessman and become a respectable member of society. Akiko defied her mother and married for love, but her brilliant, unstable husband later abandoned her. As the past and present stories move awkwardly in tandem, Yukiko cancels her travel plans, and Kiki, still mourning Phillip, breaks up with Eric. Watching Akiko with a new love on a visit home, Kiki realizes that someday she too will move on from Phillip—and that, like Yukiko and Akiko, she will always be grateful for having loved at all. Trendy Asian elements do little to gussy up an unconvincing love story.
Pub Date: May 11, 1999
ISBN: 0-553-11099-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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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