Veteran writer West (Tenement of Clay, 1992; A Stroke of Genius, 1995; etc.) returns, this time focusing on the knife-edge relationship of a Chinese daughter and her father with a Japanese whoremaster. Beginning with the Japanese capture of Nanking in 1937, West examines the delicateand inevitably compromisedrelationship that develops between conquerors and conquered as he tells the story of Scald Ibis; her father, Hong; and Hayashi, the invading colonel who controls their fate. When the Japanese soldiers trash her family's villa, the 16-year-old Scald Ibis is raped by Hayashi and his superior officer. As artist and intellectual, she finds it difficult to reconcile her past with the presentshe'd been taught by her father, an internationally famous scholar and calligrapher now off at war, that ``home life was a life of art.'' But for all her delicacy, Scald Ibis endureseven as Hayashi transforms the villa into a high-class bordello, the ``Tent Of Orange Mist,'' catering to the most depraved and jaded of sexual appetites. While Hayashi, enjoying his new responsibility, imagines receiving prestigious medals for his efforts, Scald Ibis's survival is paradoxically assured: Now that she's in a ``conduct zone devoid of codes...[where] even ethics had become merely decorative,'' she accepts Hayashi's plan to turn her into a geisha. As she adjusts to her new situation, however, Hong appears and uses his linguistic skills to become Hayashi's interpreter. For a few months, the trio exist in a carefully calibrated association, but when Hong finds out what services Scald Ibis must perform, he kills Hayashi, and is, of course, killed in turn. Only Scald Ibis survives, living to sue the Japanese government 55 years later. A terrible tale, vividly told, marred only by West's intrusive intellectual riffs and asides that have the effect of trivializing the unadorned truth.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80031-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
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
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