Tradition and superstition clash with contemporary American culture—with mixed results. After more than 20 years of separation, Chinhominey (Korean for paternal grandmother) visits her son, daughter-in-law, and two grown grandchildren in Los Angeles. Chinhominey’s family has built a typical middle-class American life in the suburbs despite the fateful prophecy that drove the newlyweds from Korea decades ago. Before the Chois” marriage, Chinhominey brought news from a fortune-teller that the two should never wed—that they would experience only unhappiness, and that their second daughter would die young. Seeking an escape from this black prophecy (and from Chinhominey’s constant pessimism), the couple not only married but moved away with high expectations for their young family. But their grand desires were never met, and now, when Chinhominey arrives, she sees secret unhappiness in all four members of her family, unsuspecting that her own long-ago prediction is in part the cause of it. First daughter Christina, foretold as the good offspring, sleepwalks through an abusive relationship with her boyfriend, whose only redeeming feature seems to be his status as a doctor. And second daughter Grace, always scrutinized for the impending mark of self-destruction, overachieves academically to fill the emptiness induced by being second best. Mr. and Mrs. Choi are even less happy, haunted by memories of a hopeful youth filled with love and passion that is now reduced to resentment and expensive appliances. Things hardly improve under grandmother’s watchful gaze, and in fact disintegrate: Christina is confronted with a shattering lie from her fiancÇ, Grace is rejected from Harvard Law, and Mr. Choi contemplates an affair with his assistant at work. Can Chinhominey’s secret—knowledge that is literally killing her’save the family? Apparently it can. A slim first novel that offers interesting insights into the power of a family legacy, though the story itself is sadly much too sketchy and thin to provide the impact that it might have.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-882593-28-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bridge Works
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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