As usual with Japanese-thriller expert Tasker (Buddha Kiss, 1998, etc.), an expat British securities executive, the real fun...
Post-boom malaise leaves Japan vulnerable to empty-headed politics, aging terrorists, and the predations of her big jealous neighbor on the mainland.
Life in the near future is nothing like the ’80s for the Japanese. Lifetime employment is dead, real-estate values have evaporated, and college graduates are shining shoes. One of the few holdovers from sunnier times is the hideously unhelpful government established by the ever-less admired Americans after the war. Locked into an endless cycle of back-scratching, competition-mashing, and guilt-absolving, the iron triangle of politicians, bureaucrats, and big industrialists seems impotent in the face of the financial recession. But at this darkest moment, a political star is rising out of the world of, god help us, pop music. Nozawa, a sort of Nipponese Springsteen with an even larger sense of his mission on earth than The Boss, seems to be pulling together a viable opposition to the historic ruling party. With guidance from his savvy manager, Nozawa has spun the adulation of his fans into political gold. Martine Meyer, stateless polyglot reporter for The Tribune, is one of the few who publicly question the strangely quick rise of the pop star to the top of the power heap. Anonymous but helpful e-mails have combined with her deep reportorial instincts to spur an investigation of the charismatic crooner, a labor that nearly estranges her from her microbrewer boyfriend. As the singer’s sun rises, unsavory events multiply. A black American soldier is framed for murdering a schoolgirl, an American warplane crashes into a city center. Just as Martine is getting a grasp on the story, the new bureau chief is pulling the rug from under her. Will she uncover the machinations of an evil Chinese faction that’s combined with the radical dreams of an aging lady terrorist before Japan blows up?
As usual with Japanese-thriller expert Tasker (Buddha Kiss, 1998, etc.), an expat British securities executive, the real fun is in the superb local scenery, not the heavy-breathing plot.Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 4-7700-2948-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Kodansha
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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