A search in China’s desert interior for the remains of the Peking Man becomes a compassionate tale of new loves found and old hurts forgiven as an expat American woman serves as the group’s interpreter. Newcomer Mones asks that nuances and complexities of character carry the narrative, rather than a sequence of sensational acts. All of the people here, minor or major, are subtly shaded: their behavior results from their temperament more than from the diversionary dictates of plot. Thirtyish Alice has been working as an interpreter in Beijing since college, but she hasn’t yet found the man—preferably Chinese, so as to let her forget her American self—to fully understand or appreciate her. She only reluctantly accompanies recently divorced American Adam Spencer and two Chinese specialists, Dr. Lin and Dr. Kong, on a search for the remains of Peking Man, rumored to have been hidden by none other than the noted theologian and archeologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Quotes from Teilhard give a wider if sometimes intrusive take on the quest as the quartet conducts a search as riveting as any mystery. But three of the party also have personal issues to confront: Alice’s father is a racist congressman whose speech about the young Alice led to a tragedy; Adam feels he’s a failure and misses his only son; Lin still loves his wife, who disappeared during the Cultural Revolution. In vividly rendered Chinese settings, Alice, while falling for Lin, learns that her father, whom she loves in spite of his lamentable attitudes, is dying. Meanwhile, Lin—though on the lookout for his erstwhile wife, once a prisoner in the region—gradually finds himself smitten by the American. At story’s end, sundry disappointments will be eased by unanticipated discoveries . An absorbing, richly imagined, and intelligent debut. (Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club Selection; author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 14, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-31934-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dell
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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