Utterly endearing. Top dog book of the century—so far.
Beautifully barked diary of a dog as taken down by his Man and a natural for Britain's Whitbread Prize, although the poor dog will never pry it loose from the hands of London's literati.
Buster's Man Hattersley was responsible for that endless Hattersley family novel (608 pages), The Maker's Mark (1991), a well-written but poorly focused history of the Hattersleys. And that's enough about him. Yes, the Man and his ilk may call Buster a German shepherd. But where the Man may trace his line back to Adam, Buster traces his back to his mother, period. Father unknown. And she died, bitten by a rat, within a week of giving birth to Buster and his long-lost brother. Buster first wound up living on the rough in Paddington Park, falling victim to the Dangerous Dogs Act, then being passed around from orphanage to orphanage, until the Man took him up, abandoning his yearly trip to Italy to let Buster train him. It's stupefying how much training a Man needs but Buster is a cheery, bottom-wagging dog and seldom snappish—though a few nips do arise, one in the pant leg to a ticket taker, the other on the neck to a big goose waddling about St. James Park and fearlessly ignoring Buster until he teaches her a thing or two. This turns out to be the Queen's goose. Journalists get after this sweet little story, of course, and soon the Man is fined 275 pounds for the dead goose, though it also leads to great fame for Buster and a trip to Buckingham Palace. Another time Buster falls ill from swallowing plastic wrap from a chicken. The cure for colon blockage, however, is better left out of our present hagiography. As is Buster's love life.
Utterly endearing. Top dog book of the century—so far.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2000
ISBN: 0-446-52662-2
Page Count: 187
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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