The heartbroken head of a multizillion-dollar corporation finds peace of mind, thanks to the world-class spunk of a gutsy-but-doomed, freckle-faced, Little Leaguer. Supersuccessful businessman John Harding's return to the New Hampshire village of his childhood was to have been the triumph of a lifetime. At the helm of his ultraunbelievably successful software company, Millennium Unlimited, John and his wife Sally and their cute little bicycle-riding, baseball-playing son Rick were welcomed back to Boland with a brass band and all the best wishes of the straight-shooting townsfolk. But then an old Ford pickup blew a tire and crashed into the Hardings' station wagon, sending Sally and little Rick to live with the angels. Alone in his big house, the house that Sally had furnished in full, totally authentic Martha Stewart, John, living on peanut butter and crackers, crazed by grief, actually considers that most un-Rotarian and downbeat way out—suicide. Then, after some straight talk from the cheap but incredibly hard-working and crusty old housekeeper and after a visit from his old childhood buddy Bill, John takes those first steps back to the upbeat world—steps that take him also to management of a Little League team where he meets the cutest, spunkiest little kid in the world: Timothy Noble. Scrappy little Tim can't hit and he can't field, but he's got a heart as big as, well, a supersuccessful software corporation. John teaches Tim to hit, but Tim teaches John lessons a zillion trillion times more Important before he begins to display Distressing Symptoms. Another positive-thinking parable from the master of autosuggested business and personal success.
Pub Date: May 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-449-90689-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.
Catch-22 is an unusual, wildly inventive comic novel about World War II, and its publishers are planning considerable publicity for it.
Set on the tiny island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean Sea, the novel is devoted to a long series of impossible, illogical adventures engaged in by the members of the 256th bombing squadron, an unlikely combat group whose fanatical commander, Colonel Cathcart, keeps increasing the men's quota of missions until they reach the ridiculous figure of 80. The book's central character is Captain Yossarian, the squadron's lead bombardier, who is surrounded at all times by the ironic and incomprehensible and who directs all his energies towards evading his odd role in the war. His companions are an even more peculiar lot: Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who loved to win parades; Major Major Major, the victim of a life-long series of practical jokes, beginning with his name; the mess officer, Milo Minderbinder, who built a food syndicate into an international cartel; and Major de Coverley whose mission in life was to rent apartments for the officers and enlisted men during their rest leaves. Eventually, after Cathcart has exterminated nearly all of Yossarian's buddies through the suicidal missions, Yossarian decides to desert — and he succeeds.
Catch-22 is also concerned with some of war's horrors and atrocities, and it is at times painfully grim.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 1961
ISBN: 0684833395
Page Count: 468
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1961
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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SEEN & HEARD
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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