This tale of Vietnamese immigrants and others in Galveston, Tex., has some great moments, but it also has so many characters that none of them can be explored in depth. Hai Truong is a Vietnamese woman who has been hospitalized due to the presence of her ``ghost husband.'' Her husband, believing that American doctors can ``fix'' his wife, unknowingly gives his consent for her to have electroshock therapy. Her young daughter, Linh Nguyen, is trying to keep house for her father in her mother's absence. Linh Nguyen's friend Trang Luu lives with an abusive aunt and uncle and dreams of locating her American father. Lang Nguyen (no relation to Linh) is a resident at the hospital who interprets for the newly arrived immigrants but also feels distant from them due to class differences. Despite his claim that he is saving himself for marriage, he begins a sort-of flirtation with a white nurse. African-American Azelita works in a school office, while her sister encourages her to go to college and become a teacher. Xan Tuan My Van is in remedial classes at the same school and acts out by randomly performing kung fu. All of these situations are set up, but then little actually happens, and the characters rarely interact with one another in more than superficial ways. There are plenty of instances in which the Vietnamese are misunderstood. Well-meaning white people say things like ``Usually the Orientals are saints. Work done, smiles, eager to help,'' and when Xan starts to do better in school, his fisherman father shows up during class and delivers a load of shrimp to the boy's teacher in gratitude. Gardner (Milkweed, 1994) uses a steady third-person voice but struggles to present a multitude of points of view that never mesh. Sets out to show how unique and complex relations between different cultures are, but ends up singing a few rousing choruses of ``It's a Small World.''
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-393-03738-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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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