A first collection by an English/journalism professor (CUNY), himself an ex-gang member raised in the South Bronx, looks at teenagers in the present-day —hood. In 15 stories about life in and out of the Lower Depths—b-boys, gangsta rappers, junkies, ex-cons, graffiti artists, and gang- bangers—Rondinone gets off to a most unpromising start with “Something for Sucio,” an excruciatingly unfunny tale of Bronx gang members planning a party for the victim of a hit, and “The Nobody,” the story of a female “tagger” (graffiti artist) in South Central L.A. But when the author shifts out of the first-person and escapes the jargon-laden tone of these two efforts, things (briefly) pick up: “Cleopatra” and “Faux Pas” take a deeper, more mature attitude toward the violence they contemplate, achieving moments of real feeling. A series of interlocking stories about the rise and fall of Chilly P., a rap star, show a mordant wit and a greater command of dramatic monologue than the book’s opening would have suggested. But it’s downhill again from there, as Rondinone descends into the self-intoxicated slang-slinging of the title piece. Too many of the tales here seem to be just opportunities taken (and indulged in) by Rondinone to show that he’s listening to his students’ argot, dripping with postmodern irony of the cheapest sort. Still, “Cleopatra,” with its low-key portrait of a former gang member returning from prison to his old block, and “Faux Pas,” a similarly-themed effort told from the point of view of a younger friend of an ex-con, are genuinely moving and suggest that Rondinone can do better. Depending on which voice is going to emerge in later work, either a harbinger of good things to come or a portent of less.
Pub Date: July 13, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-18686-X
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1998
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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