Young China hand Salzman made a big splash (at age 22) with his account of teaching in China, Iron and Silk (1986); now comes his first novel, a picaresque set in China, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. They're Chinese all right, but Salzman's two leads are still an all-too-familiar combination: a guileless young man and a much older henchman with extraordinary powers. The latter is Colonel Sun, a many-centuries-old Rip Van Winkle, and as resourceful as the mythical Monkey King; he can disarm an opponent with his power-stare. In 1960, he saves little Hsun-ching from certain death and delivers him to the scholarly Buddhist monk Wei-ching. The monk's hope while raising him is that one day Hsun-ching will travel to America to retrieve the Laughing Sutra, the only major scripture missing from his collection, but fast the boy must endure ten years hard labor in a commune (all part of Mao's Cultural Revolution). By 1976, the 20-year-old Hsun-ching is ready to set off, with the Colonel as his companion. Sun gets them across the border into Hong Kong, though (more old-hat material) he is nonplussed by such things as guns, TV sets, and elevators, and then wangles them free passage to San Francisco. Their American experience is a mix of cross-cultural comedy, as they struggle to make sense of hippies and gays, fast food and soup kitchens, and old-fashioned adventure (breaking into the Dharma Institute to steal the sutra), with just a smidgen of romance (Hsun-ching falls for the curator's assistant). The wrap-up has the monk, now on his deathbed, receiving the sutra from Hsun-ching, while the Colonel prepares to hibernate again. What starts out as a spiritual fable soon yields to run-of-the-mill picaresque: when the quest for the sutra fails to develop momentum, Salzman dusts off some befuddled-foreigner routines. Disappointing.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1990
ISBN: 0679735461
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1990
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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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