by Sandi Tan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 7, 2012
Cassandra is compelling, but despite graphic, sometimes gratuitous eroticism and violence, the ambitious novel eventually...
Tan debuts with a cinematically epic ghost story set largely on a Malaysian island that bears a striking resemblance to her native Singapore.
In 2010, fearing that she is being erased from history, an aged woman living in Tokyo recounts her life to a visiting professor: Born in 1922 Shanghai, Ling and her twin brother, Li, are inseparable until 7-year-old Ling realizes that she can see ghosts while he can’t. From then on, ghosts surround her, some charming, some sorrowful, some horrific. During the Depression, Ling’s father loses his teaching job. At the insistence of Ling’s agoraphobic mother, he travels to the island in search of work, taking only the twins with him. They live in poverty, but Ling enjoys the cosmopolitan city until her father takes a job managing a rubber plantation when she is 12. He proves inept, so for three years Li and Ling run the operation, engaging in a little incest along the way, until the spirits of the dead rise up in an act of violence. As Japanese power builds ominously, Ling takes a job with the wealthy Wee family. Before long, she is engaged to sweet, dopey Daniel Wee and has changed her name to Cassandra. Recognizing her as a kindred spirit, the Wees’ chauffeur, Issa, encourages her to corral her power over the spirit world, but she bungles her attempt. The Japanese invade; the Wees are destroyed; and she becomes a Japanese officer’s sex toy until the British return victorious. Cassandra reunites with Issa and with Daniel’s former schoolmate, Kenneth. Helping them in their struggle for postwar independence, Cassandra enlists a host of child ghosts who wreak uncontrollable havoc. As Kenneth rises in the political world, he becomes Cassandra’s secret lover, but their affair is doomed: He embodies the relentless pursuit of ghost-free prosperity, while she can’t shake the haunted tension between the present and the past.
Cassandra is compelling, but despite graphic, sometimes gratuitous eroticism and violence, the ambitious novel eventually becomes a slog through too many ghosts.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-446-56392-5
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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by Susan Crandall ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 2, 2013
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.
Crandall (Sleep No More, 2010, etc.) delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old.
Due in part to tradition, intimidation and Jim Crow laws, segregation is very much ingrained into the Southern lifestyle in 1963. Few white children question these rules, least of all Starla Caudelle, a spunky young girl who lives with her stern, unbending grandmother in Cayuga Springs, Miss., and spends an inordinate amount of time on restriction for her impulsive actions and sassy mouth. Starla’s dad works on an oil rig in the Gulf; her mother abandoned the family to seek fame and fortune in Nashville when Starla was 3. In her youthful innocence, Starla’s convinced that her mother’s now a big singing star, and she dreams of living with her again one day, a day that seems to be coming more quickly than Starla’s anticipated. Convinced that her latest infraction is about to land her in reform school, Starla decides she has no recourse but to run away from home and head to Nashville to find her mom. Ill prepared for the long, hot walk and with little concept of time and distance, Starla becomes weak and dehydrated as she trudges along the hot, dusty road. She gladly accepts water and a ride from Eula, a black woman driving an old truck, and finds, to her surprise, that she’s not Eula’s only passenger. Inside a basket is a young white baby, an infant supposedly abandoned outside a church, whom Eula calls James. Although Eula doesn’t intend to drive all the way to Nashville, when she shows up at her home with the two white children, a confrontation with her husband forces her into becoming a part of Starla’s journey, and it’s this journey that creates strong bonds between the two: They help each other face fears as they each become stronger individuals. Starla learns firsthand about the abuse and scare tactics used to intimidate blacks and the skewed assumption of many whites that blacks are inferior beings. Assisted by a black schoolteacher who shows Eula and Starla unconditional acceptance and kindness, both ultimately learn that love and kinship transcend blood ties and skin color.
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.Pub Date: July 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0772-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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by Anthony Doerr ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 6, 2014
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.
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Doerr presents us with two intricate stories, both of which take place during World War II; late in the novel, inevitably, they intersect.
In August 1944, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind 16-year-old living in the walled port city of Saint-Malo in Brittany and hoping to escape the effects of Allied bombing. D-Day took place two months earlier, and Cherbourg, Caen and Rennes have already been liberated. She’s taken refuge in this city with her great-uncle Etienne, at first a fairly frightening figure to her. Marie-Laure’s father was a locksmith and craftsman who made scale models of cities that Marie-Laure studied so she could travel around on her own. He also crafted clever and intricate boxes, within which treasures could be hidden. Parallel to the story of Marie-Laure we meet Werner and Jutta Pfennig, a brother and sister, both orphans who have been raised in the Children’s House outside Essen, in Germany. Through flashbacks we learn that Werner had been a curious and bright child who developed an obsession with radio transmitters and receivers, both in their infancies during this period. Eventually, Werner goes to a select technical school and then, at 18, into the Wehrmacht, where his technical aptitudes are recognized and he’s put on a team trying to track down illegal radio transmissions. Etienne and Marie-Laure are responsible for some of these transmissions, but Werner is intrigued since what she’s broadcasting is innocent—she shares her passion for Jules Verne by reading aloud 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A further subplot involves Marie-Laure’s father’s having hidden a valuable diamond, one being tracked down by Reinhold von Rumpel, a relentless German sergeant-major.
Doerr captures the sights and sounds of wartime and focuses, refreshingly, on the innate goodness of his major characters.Pub Date: May 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-4658-6
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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