by Shawn Wong ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 23, 1995
Seattle poet/essayist Wong's second novel (after Homebase, 1991, not reviewed): a satirical exploration of ethnic-American love whose characters' addiction to sociological rhetoric gets in their (and their readers') way. The title refers to the schoolyard taunt ``What are youChinese, Japanese, or American Knees?'' This sort of mild insider's humor permeates the story of Californian Raymond Dinga ``lapsed Chinese'' who's had affairs with white women and suffered through the requisite marriage to a Chinese-American (and, so it often seemed, to her entire clan). Now, at age 37, the assistant director of Jack London College's Office of Minority Affairs is depressed and bewildered to find himselfas the first divorced member of his own Chinese familyhighly unlikely to perpetuate the purity of the ancestral genes. Caught between an ``American'' itch to strike out on his own and an equally strong desire to play the role of dutiful Chinese son (though his mother is dead and his engineer father, far from monitoring Raymond's behavior, dreams only of sending off for a brand-new mail-order bride), Raymond naturally falls in love next with the woman most likely to unnerve him. Aurora (i.e., ``many-colored'') Crane, a beautiful young half- Japanese, half-Irish photojournalist, has her own problems with ethnicityamong them a resentment of society's stereotypes regarding Asian-American womenand she finds Raymond's ethnic guilt and endless search for identity a tiresome reminder of all she wants to avoid. For a while, Raymond's political correctness drives Aurora out of his lifelong enough for him to have a brief tryst with a war-scarred Vietnamese coworkerbut in the end the couple's philosophical conflicts prove as binding a glue as their profound mutual lust. Aurora takes Raymond back, and his tedious cultural theorizing fills her home againbut it doesn't matter because she loves him. Sadly, the reader has no such blinders on. (An excerpt appeared in the anthology Charlie Chan is Dead, 1993.) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Aug. 23, 1995
ISBN: 0-684-80304-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1995
Share your opinion of this book
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
49
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
National Book Award Finalist
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
Share your opinion of this book
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.