An affecting if uneven debut in which a Korean girl, newly immigrated to the US, struggles to transcend the chaos of a strange land and of a violent, overstressed family. Ever since Ahn Joo arrived in Arlington, Virginia, with her parents and younger brother, her parents have fought unceasingly about her father's drinking and her mother's lack of respect. It's true, Ahn Joo realizes, that her father contradicts the stereotype of the hardworking Korean immigrant who opens a grocery and proceeds to grow rich in America. Fleeing an abusive father of his own in Korea rather than moving to the US in pursuit of wealth, he lacks ambition and seems happy with his welding job. Still, even eight-year-old Ahn Joo is unprepared for her mother's extreme reaction to her husband's laziness: One day, as Ahn Joo is walking home from school, she sees her mother, with her son in tow, fleeing home in a cab with the puzzling name ``Reliable'' painted on the door. Entering their apartment, Ahn Joo finds a note from her mother promising to come back for her someday, but as the years go by and her mother never calls or writes, the girl is left alone to face adolescence, care for her father, and puzzle out her family's mysteries. The author deftly evokes such vivid moments as Ahn Joo's embarrassment when her father takes over a snack cart in Washington, and her depiction of her heroine's struggle to come to terms with a new land—as well as of the push-pull relationship between father and daughter—are both memorable and moving. In the end, though, the lack of any real catharsis or resolution renders the parts greater than the whole.
Pub Date: July 25, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15489-5
Page Count: 160
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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