Not Su Tong’s best, but he’s always well worth reading.
The rise and fall of a callow adolescent monarch, in a strange, strained tale from the gifted Chinese author (Raise the Red Lantern, 1993; Rice, 1995).
Originally published in 1992, this is presumably an earlier work than either of those near-masterpieces. The story’s narrated by Duanbai, who ascends to the throne of the Xie Empire (in an unspecified time and place) upon the death of the father to whom he is only “fifth son.” Duanbai’s anointing thus provokes the resentment of his several half-brothers—notably older, more assured Duanwen, who will eventually become Duanbai’s chief rival and nemesis. Su Tong crafts a rapid succession of vivid scenes dramatizing the boy emperor’s proneness to impulsive decision-making and irrational brutality, his immature fixations on the dream of becoming a circus tightrope walker and on the superior freedom and grace exhibited by birds—while focusing on relationships that define and limit him: with power-behind-the-throne maternal grandmother Madame Huangfu, the gentle eunuch (Swallow) who becomes his closest companion, and beautiful concubines Lady Hui, who receives the Emperor’s love and incites the jealousy of his scorned empress, and her sister concubines. Duanbai’s inept rule sparks a peasant rebellion and leads indirectly to his dethronement by the victorious Duanwen. An earlier prophecy of “calamity” is fulfilled. The birds Duanbai has adored are carriers of a devastating plague. Exiled and penniless, he achieves an ironic realization of his boyhood dream, becomes an itinerant circus performer as the Xie Empire crumbles, and ends his days—as had his beloved mentor before him—in a remote monastery, pondering the ungraspable wisdom of Confucius. It’s all rather much, and its crammed, forced dénouement bears an unfortunate resemblance to bad Bergman and Fellini films at their most cloyingly symbolic and fey. Still, it has the energy of white-hot melodrama, and it’s a propulsive read.
Not Su Tong’s best, but he’s always well worth reading.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2005
ISBN: 1-4013-6666-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2004
Light on surprises and character development, this tepid thriller will have most astute readers correctly guessing the...
An accident forces a man to return to his small Iowa hometown and confront violent secrets from his past, ones he’s kept hidden from his wife.
Sarah Quinlan thought she knew everything about her husband, Jack: an accident killed his parents when he was 15 so he left Penny Gate, Iowa, and has only been back once. But when the couple gets news that Jack’s beloved aunt Julia, who raised Jack and his younger sister, Amy, after their parents’ deaths, is gravely injured in a fall, the prodigal son returns. Gudenkauf (Little Mercies, 2014, etc.) makes it clear from the start that nothing should be taken at face value, not Jack’s story about his parents (his mother was actually bludgeoned to death, and his father, now MIA, was the prime suspect) or the seemingly idyllic small-town atmosphere. This, however, does little to heighten the suspense as advice columnist Sarah takes on the role of amateur detective in sniffing out Quinlan family secrets past and present. Through her we meet Jack’s terse cousin Dean and his too-perfect wife, Celia, along with Julia’s husband, Hal, who became like a father to Jack in the wake of his own family tragedy, and Amy, who couldn’t be more stereotypically “troubled.” Jack and Amy’s tragic past, which becomes the central mystery of the plot once Sarah figures out that her husband has been lying to her for two decades, is tied to Julia’s not-so-accidental fall, but only for the purposes of a neatly sewn-up plot.
Light on surprises and character development, this tepid thriller will have most astute readers correctly guessing the ending halfway through.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7783-1865-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
Another of Tyler's family portraits: again she draws forth that elusive aura of redemptive family unity—despite snapped loyalties, devastating loneliness, and the conflicts between those who hit life hard and those who "live life at a slant." Ezra Tull—one of Tyler's gentle, bumbling men—is, unlike his meddlesome, reproachful mother Pearl, a "feeder." And at his "Homesick Restaurant," an untidy establishment where he'll solicitously "cook what other people felt homesick for," Ezra sometimes hopefully sets a table for family occasions. But "the family as a whole never yet finished one of his dinners—it was as if what they couldn't get right they had to keep returning to." The family, you see, has never been "right" since that day years before when Pearl's husband Beck left them for good: overburdened with the raising of three young children, lonely and friendless, Pearl became an angry sort of mother to them all, raising them each with a "trademark flaw." Older brother Cody is handsome, bland, a prankster who hides the unloved rage of an unfavorite son—and this drives him to steal Ezra's fiancé Ruth for his own wife. Sister Jenny, deserted by her second husband, given to child abuse, hurt and overworked, is rescued by the family. Gentle Ezra is stuck with mother Pearl—though he comes to see "her true interior self, still enormous, larger than life, powerful. Overwhelming." And when Cody's teenage son Luke hitchhikes, on the crest of one of Cody's pristine rages, from the Virginia home to Ezra in Baltimore, he too is inundated with family miseries. Finally, then, Pearl dies and the family will gather again at the restaurant. But this time they'll be joined by the near-mythical old Beck Tull: can he now ever be part of the family? Well, perhaps—because a life's anger seems to drain as Cody sees all his family "opening like a fan," drawing him in—and Beck, an old man who could not, long ago, take the "tangles" of family, will stay "until the dessert wine." Less magical, perhaps, than other Tylers—but her vision of saving interdependencies and time's witchiness continues to tease and enchant.
Pub Date: March 26, 1982
ISBN: 0449911594
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1982
PROFILES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
