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AMERICAN WOMAN

Name: AMERICAN WOMAN
Author: Susan Choi
ISBN: 0-06-054221-7

by Susan Choi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 2003

Earnest but disappointing.

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An ambitious version of the Patty Hearst story: the result is intellectually provocative and vividly imagined but weighed down by its intentions.

Despite some fine writing, Choi’s second with a Japanese-American protagonist (the award-winning Foreign Student, 1998) seems as much like a seminar—on class, race, and power—as it does a novel. And although protagonist Jenny Shimada shares her thoughts about her life, her past, and her present experiences, she remains as abstract as the ideas she’s grappling with. At the start, 25-year-old Jenny, who, with lover William (now in prison), had bombed federal buildings in protest against the Vietnam War, is hiding out in New York State, working under an alias as she restores an old house. She’s tracked down by Frazer, a former activist, who asks her to take care of Juan, Yvonne, and Pauline, who not only robbed a bank but escaped a fire in California that killed many of their co-conspirators. Frazer has rented a remote farmhouse and wants the group to write a book that will tell their story, especially Pauline’s, in order to make money both for him and for their cause. As Jenny recalls her alienation from her Japanese-American father, who deplores her activism (though it’s his wartime internment that made him anti-American), she tries to keep the trio focused. But the others prefer to exercise, shoot guns, and compose tapes exhorting revolution—all a worry to Jenny, who is against indiscriminate violence. She observes that Pauline, the heiress, is as dedicated as the other two, and, after a robbery goes fatally awry, the group separates. Jenny and Pauline flee New York and start driving west. On the run, Jenny tries to understand Pauline as she recalls, not persuasively, her privileged birth and her reasons for cooperating with the revolutionaries. But the police are on their track, and betrayal is in the air. Jenny must think hard about her own moral choices.

Earnest but disappointing.

Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2003

ISBN: 0-06-054221-7

Page Count: 384

Publisher: HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
FLASHLIGHT
by Susan Choi

- BOOK REVIEW
TRUST EXERCISE
by Susan Choi

- BOOK REVIEW
MY EDUCATION
by Susan Choi

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.