Sometimes disjointed and rambling, but nevertheless a kind of exotic Dallas: lurid, two-dimensional, fast-paced—and utterly...
Chun’s debut—part novel, part biography—tells the life of her great-grandfather, a legendary Chinese merchant who moved to Hawaii in 1876 and became one of the islands’ richest men.
The Pacific Ocean was one of the world’s great crossroads in the 19th century, a busy place on which the ambitions of four continents intersected day by day. Its transport of goods and cargoes produced one of the greatest markets the world has ever known, with vast fortunes being made by the smart, the lucky, and the aggressive—qualities possessed in abundance by Lau Ah Leong. The son of a gambler, he became homeless when his father lost the family estate on a bad wager. Cast into the streets while still a boy, he and his father lived first by begging, then by trading—and of necessity the young Leong learned how to drive a good bargain. Eventually he settled in Honolulu, but he kept strong business ties (and a magnificent country estate) in China and made good use of such connections to expand his import-export concerns into a financial empire. The story here is narrated by Leong’s daughter-in-law Phoenix, a headstrong, well-educated girl from a prominent family in Singapore. Raised by her grandfather after her father’s death, Phoenix managed her family’s estate until her marriage to Tat-tung at 17—practically an old maid by the standards of the time. As an outsider, she saw Tat-tung’s family without sentimentality or nostalgia, finding herself alternately fascinated and horrified by her father-in-law’s headstrong, self-centered brilliance and ambition. As in many family epics, the cast list is long and confusing (especially to readers unfamiliar with Chinese names), but the focus stays on Leong—early hardships, success, and then struggles with the Americans of Hawaii and the Communists of China, etc.—who remains Chun’s most interesting character.
Sometimes disjointed and rambling, but nevertheless a kind of exotic Dallas: lurid, two-dimensional, fast-paced—and utterly addictive.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-57071-866-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
PROFILES
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
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