by Nancy Young Mosny ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 9, 1999
This debut novel by a Chinese American about taking care of ailing elderly parents begins with much promise but peters out into short chapters that note, but don’t dig deeply into, the passing of time. The story begins as Jenny, the mother of three—the youngest still a baby—learns that her 70-year-old mother has had a stroke. The early chapters are particularly effective, detailing Jenny’s shock at her mother’s fear of dying, and her attempts to feed and wash the older woman while simultaneously trying to take care of her own husband, East European Tomas, and family. As she and her brother Kent, a cardiologist, adjust to the change, Jenny recalls her mother’s life in China, where she endured the Japanese invasion, afterward becoming unhappily married to their father, who immigrated to the US as a child, fought in WWII, then returned to China to find a bride. Ma Ma arrived in New York married and pregnant in 1949. Perhaps Ba Ba was disappointed at not receiving the large dowry he expected, but in any case the marriage soon broke down, though Ma Ma refused a divorce. All her life, Jenny has tried to be a good daughter (even though her mother was disappointed when she married a non-Chinese), and now she wants to take care of Ma Ma in her own home, but brother Kent persuades her that it would be too difficult. While Ma Ma slowly recovers, undergoes physical therapy, and moves back into her old Chinatown apartment, Jenny has to deal with ailing Ba Ba, whose constant anger, she now realizes, probably hid feelings of loss and disappointment. After Ba Ba dies, the story consists of brief updates on Jenny’s prospering lot and Ma Ma’s improving health. It seems that life, often previously so hard for Ma Ma, has become rich in “Jick fook”—accumulated happiness. Nicely evocative details of immigrant life and generational conflict, though not enough to turn a promising concept into full-blooded novel.
Pub Date: March 9, 1999
ISBN: 0-553-38020-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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