A vital, enthralling debut in which devastating social commentary is delivered with a wink.
Mĕi Brown is a recent Dartmouth dropout working as a private chauffeur with a dodgy roster of clients—one of whom hires her to drive all the way across the country.
When Mĕi picks up 20-something Henry Lee, she can’t help noticing that he guards his enormous suitcase religiously. Although the two gradually grow closer on the long journey from San Francisco to Syracuse, trading barbs through the limo’s partition, Henry’s easy charm and good looks can’t fully alleviate Mĕi’s suspicions. She repeatedly calls her grandfather, her Lǎoyé—who’s responsible for finding her passengers looking to pay off the books—to see what he thinks about Henry. Since the death of his wife, Lǎoyé’s camped out in the family garage, smoking marijuana and watching old films, shrinking his existence to fit one room. Mĕi recalls the ways his encyclopedic knowledge of history and “ability to educate painlessly” bolstered her high school education and how his acerbic wit offered a lifeline through her teenage years; now she frets over his reluctance to leave home. Lǎoyé’s unquestioning support of her decision to drop out of Dartmouth after her father’s untimely death—buying her a car and introducing her to clients in need of a discreet chauffeur—further strengthens their bond, and she finds herself missing him terribly. With Lǎoyé’s encouragement, she continues the journey, and the lengthy stretches of driving allow Mĕi to reflect on life in the wake of her father’s passing—especially her estrangement from her mother, whose tacit acceptance of his death Mĕi can’t understand. Finally, Henry’s insistence on unusually frequent breaks leads Mĕi to confront him about his precious luggage, and once his secret is revealed she begins to see the world in a very different light. Frazier expertly weaves historic and contemporary injustices faced by Chinese Americans and Uyghurs through this fast-paced, propulsive book, which is at its most powerful when depicting the way Mĕi’s family navigates life after catastrophe. She has a knack for writing funny dialogue—scathing sarcasm underpinned by a great deal of love—and there are plenty of hilarious exchanges to lighten the dark political context of the novel.
A vital, enthralling debut in which devastating social commentary is delivered with a wink.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250872715
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2024
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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