While the story sometimes reads like an intercultural soap opera, it is the author’s courage to face her mistakes that makes...
An American freelance journalist’s painful account of how a hasty marriage to a Chinese man turned her life upside down.
Blumberg-Kason was a “shy Midwestern wallflower” going to graduate school in Hong Kong when she met her future husband. With his intelligence, confidence and movie-star looks, Cai seemed a dream come true. He engaged her as his English tutor and, a few months later, declared his desire to date and marry her. The author assented, blind to what it would mean to become the wife of a Chinese man she barely knew. Before the pair even married, Cai’s parents told her they would take care of the baby they had not yet had—with or without her. Immediately after the wedding, the formerly “gentle” Cai was “more interested in watching porn than being with [her].” His bad behavior only worsened, as he became moody, demanding and verbally abusive. Believing that Cai’s outbursts were simply the result of a need to acclimate to married life, Blumberg-Kason resolved to "dance [her] way around future eruptions.” But their relationship grew even more riddled with problems, one of which involved a too-close-for-comfort relationship between Cai and one of his male professors. Lonely and unable to tolerate the social and interpersonal norms of mainland Chinese culture, Blumberg-Kason moved to San Francisco with her husband. But the perfect life she still dreamed of eluded her. Even the author’s longed-for baby became a source of cross-cultural conflict between her and her husband. Dissatisfied with American life, Cai demanded that their son go back to China with him. Only then did Blumberg-Kason realize that accommodating her husband would cause her to lose the one thing that had redeemed an otherwise dysfunctional marriage.
While the story sometimes reads like an intercultural soap opera, it is the author’s courage to face her mistakes that makes the book worthwhile.Pub Date: July 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4022-9334-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Lionel Dahmer, father of mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer, here writes one of the most courageous, unsensational books ever written about serial murder. It does not even summarize Jeffrey's crimes. Dahmer takes upon himself much of the guilt for his son's acts by considering a genetic predisposition to murder he may have passed on to his son; various acts of his own moral blindness that may have contributed to his son's deprived emotional being; and things he did and didn't do when certain symptoms appeared that might have alerted him to Jeffrey's lust for sexual atrocity. What parts of the father, the book asks, are replicated in the son? Largely, Jeffrey is a failure whose failings were earlier those of his father, though the father overcame each failing as its pain grew. Intellectually and physically inferior as a child, Lionel was tutored by his parents from first grade on, and by dint of hard study earned a doctorate in chemistry. A puny child, he took up body-building as a teenager and turned himself into a fine physical specimen. But he also had murderous dreams from which he would awake trembling. Jeffrey's mother was also a depressive, and her excessive pill-taking during pregnancy may well have damaged Jeffrey's genes. As a child, he developed a testicular hernia that, when treated by surgery, gave him a fear of castration and seemed to lead into lasting withdrawal from his family and friendships and, by the time he was 15, into alcoholism and a liking for dead things. Lionel sees Jeffrey's main psychotic trigger lying in a need to control: his own need for intellectual and physical control resulted in a glass wall between himself and Jeffrey; Jeffrey's need for control grew into a need for drugged or dead lovers who submitted to him absolutely. Clear, modest, intelligent—and extremely disturbing.
Pub Date: March 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-12156-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
Daniels emerges as a force to be reckoned with—and not someone to cross. Of interest to politics junkies but with plenty of...
A lively, candid memoir from person-in-the-news Daniels.
The author is a household name for just one reason, as she allows—adding, though, that “my life is a lot more interesting than an encounter with Donald Trump.” So it is, and not without considerable effort on her part. Daniels—not her real name, but one, she points out, that she owns, unlike the majority of porn stars—grew up on the wrong side of town, the product of a broken home with few prospects, but she is just as clearly a person of real intelligence and considerable business know-how. Those attributes were not the reason that Trump called her on a fateful night more than a decade ago, but she put them to work, so much so that in some preliminary conversation, he proclaimed—by her account, his talk is blustery and insistent—that “our businesses are kind of a lot alike, but different.” The talk led to what “may have been the least impressive sex I’d ever had, but clearly, he didn’t share that opinion.” The details are deeply unpleasant, but Daniels adds nuance to the record: She doesn’t find it creepy that Trump likened her to his daughter, and she reckons that as a reality show host, he had a few points in his favor even if he failed to deliver on a promise to get her on The Apprentice. The author’s 15 minutes arrived a dozen years later, when she was exposed as the recipient of campaign hush money. Her account of succeeding events is fast-paced and full of sharp asides pointing to the general sleaziness of most of the players and the ugliness of politics, especially the Trumpian kind, which makes the porn industry look squeaky-clean by comparison.
Daniels emerges as a force to be reckoned with—and not someone to cross. Of interest to politics junkies but with plenty of lessons on taking charge of one’s own life.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-20556-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2018
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