It would be reductive, though not entirely unfair, to label this fitfully impressive first novel a gay Southeast Asian Like Water for Chocolate. The protagonist, Fong Mun, a Laotian resettled in California, has achieved security and minor fame as a chef and cookbook author, and has effectively buried his memories of enduring, then escaping, his beleaguered country's political chaos during the 1970s—until a handsome young countryman, Raymond, whom Fong Mun meets at a dinner party he's catering, solicits his life story, and the memories tumble forth, in flashback scenes juxtaposed against the pair's evening together, first in the kitchen, then in bed. Huo vividly renders the gradual capitulation of Fong Mun's city (Luang Prabang) to Communists who appropriate private property and schools, then dethrone Laos's monarchy at the time of the fall of Saigon. And he conveys with real feeling the multiple disorientations suffered by ``a boy who looked like a girl'' (and gradually realizes he's homosexual), separated from his family, then reunited with them in a refugee camp, where his mother and grandmother die. Fong Mun's narrative is pleasingly lucid, graced by occasional magical-realist touches (such as a ``chronic toothache'' that plagues Luang Prabang's entire populace). But the intervals that interrupt his tale for conversations with the sympathetic Raymond are redundant and filled with details of ethnic cookery unlikely to interest any reader not already devoted to Laotian cuisine. Furthermore, Huo races to the end: An enormity of climactic information (leading up to, then briefly describing, Fong Mun's move to America) is awkwardly crammed into the final 20 or so pages. The novel's central concept—that reconstructing recipes from memory is Fong Mun's way of recapturing and preserving the culture taken from him—is a moving one, and when Huo sticks closely to it, we're absorbed and persuaded by his story. An appealing debut that doesn't fully satisfy but does whet one's appetite for more of Huo's work.
Pub Date: April 2, 1998
ISBN: 0-525-94280-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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