Krysl’s third collection (Mozart, Westmoreland, and Me, 1985, etc.) perceptively chronicles the fault lines in our emotional landscape that widen and needlessly divide lovers, individuals, and communities. The volume is divided into three sections that include stories on a common theme. In the first, entitled Glamourpuss, six pieces—both allegorical and realistic—explore the divisions between the sexes. —Extinct Species,— for instance, is a reworking of the Creation myth, in which a man and a woman act not only as the architects of their own creation but also as its destroyers, a fate redeemed only by the affection that somehow still survives between them. An older woman in —Laissez-Faire,— the best story here, at first feels jealous of a beautiful young woman who’s flirting with her husband. But later, discovering the young woman scowling at her reflection in a restroom, the older is distressed by her own initially jealous reaction and reassures the younger that she’s beautiful and doesn—t need a man to establish her worth. The four stories of the second section, The Island, reflecting the writer’s experience as a Peace Corps recruit in Sri Lanka, detail the horrors of the current civil war between the Hindu Tamils and the Buddhist Sinhalese. In another fine effort, —The Thing Around Them,— a young mother whose husband was taken away by guerrillas hopes to save her son by sending him abroad for adoption. But when soldiers surround her daughter’s school, she realizes she can do little to protect her family. Finally, the three stories in Eating God illustrate the divisions between spiritual and physical needs, exemplified most effectively in —Distant Lights on Water,— about a fashion designer who, moved by the plight of his Third World employees, finds a way to reconcile his art and his conscience. Intellectually provocative takes; vigorous and crafted prose.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 1-56689-076-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
