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A CHOICE OF EVILS

Japan's infamous 1937 asault on the Chinese city of Nanking and its role in the approach of WW II is at the heart of this panoramic and sometimes didactic account of the moral dilemmas confronted by the good in evil times. Chand (The Bonsai Tree, 1983, etc.) is especially adept at setting a scene and creating vivid characters; her attempts at sketching in a historical background, though, are less convincing. Sections on the Meiji dynasty, Emperor Hirohito, and the postwar trials of Japanese leaders are more homiletic than descriptive, needlessly expanding on points her fictional characters make ably on their own. Assembling a group of characters whose backgrounds and past are introduced with flashbacks, Chand brings them all to Nanking in 1937 just before the city is savagely plundered. There is Dr. Martha Clayton, an American missionary, whose husband Bill was killed by Chinese bandits. Martha has lost her faith in God, and clings desperately to her two teenage daughters, Flora and Lily. Helping temporarily at a Nanking hospital is Nadya Komosky, a Russian who fled the communists. At the Japanese Embassy is widower and former leftist Kenjiro Nozaki; in town is Professor Teng, a Chinese political activist whom Kenjiro befriended when both were studying in France; and rounding out this international cast are Donald Addison, a British journalist; Akira, a Japanese soldier; and Tilik Dayal, an Indian freedom fighter. As the Japanese march into Nanking, systematically raping and killing its inhabitants, all will face awful choices. Martha, who refused to send her daughters back to the US, will go mad when Lily is raped and Flora commits suicide; Kanjiro and Tilik will risk their lives to save others; Akira, a military Everyman, will desert, sickened by the killing he's had to do. Only Nadya and Donald will eventually find a measure of happiness. Graphic reminders that words can still paint horrors with harrowing effect in a sometimes schematic but searing story of love and loyalty under fire.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1996

ISBN: 0-297-81743-4

Page Count: 461

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Trafalgar

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

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

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