An espionage adventure that focuses more on its protagonist’s emotions and concerns than on James Bond–style aspirations.
In the 1960s, a teenage girl is caught between North and South Korea when she agrees to be a spy for Seoul and go behind enemy lines in Park’s (When a Rooster Crows at Night, 2004, etc.) thriller.
Miyong is an 18-year-old war orphan in a work group on a South Korean island in 1967 when she accidentally stumbles across a battalion of disguised North Korean commandos. It’s just one of many secret North Korean attempts to commit assassinations and acts of terrorism and sabotage. She tells South Korean authorities, who use her information to kill all but one of the marauders. As a reward, they promote Miyong to a military-secretary post. She’s still dangerously naïve, however; soon, she’s badly compromised by Jongmi, an old friend who’s now the mistress of a North Korean spymaster. Jongmi tries to entice Miyong north of the 38th parallel with the lure of a reunion with relatives there. South Korean and American forces give Miyong a chance to redeem herself by training her in spycraft for a perilous rescue mission, which involves infiltrating a prison compound in the north. The operation also offers a tantalizing hint of a reunion with her parents, whom she thought were dead. Park tells a Cold War tale which has more of a sense of spiritual desolation than is typically found in spy thrillers. The heroine’s odyssey through the harsh, half-starved dictatorship of Kim Il-Sung is indeed an Orwellian nightmare. But the author is also willing to portray South Korea’s weaknesses and drawbacks, especially regarding their alliance with the Americans in Vietnam. She writes with empathy for Korean families, who were not only split by civil war and ideology, but also battered tragically by the imperial ambitions of Japan, China, the Soviet Union, and the West. The author’s prose is simple, direct, and effective throughout, eschewing pedantic detail. There are some religious elements, but Park never handles them in a preachy manner.
An espionage adventure that focuses more on its protagonist’s emotions and concerns than on James Bond–style aspirations.Pub Date: March 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4697-6908-0
Page Count: 312
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A fable about the consolatory and strengthening powers of religion flounders about somewhere inside this unconventional coming-of-age tale, which was shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Award. The story is told in retrospect by Piscine Molitor Patel (named for a swimming pool, thereafter fortuitously nicknamed “Pi”), years after he was shipwrecked when his parents, who owned a zoo in India, were attempting to emigrate, with their menagerie, to Canada. During 227 days at sea spent in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger (mostly with the latter, which had efficiently slaughtered its fellow beasts), Pi found serenity and courage in his faith: a frequently reiterated amalgam of Muslim, Hindu, and Christian beliefs. The story of his later life, education, and mission rounds out, but does not improve upon, the alternately suspenseful and whimsical account of Pi’s ordeal at sea—which offers the best reason for reading this otherwise preachy and somewhat redundant story of his Life.
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-100811-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
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BOOK REVIEW
With lantern-lit tales of old China, a rich humanity, and an acute ear for bicultural tuning, a splendid first novel—one...
An inordinately moving, electric exploration of two warring cultures fused in love, focused on the lives of four Chinese women—who emigrated, in their youth, at various times, to San Francisco—and their very American 30-ish daughters.
Tan probes the tension of love and often angry bewilderment as the older women watch their daughters "as from another shore," and the daughters struggle to free themselves from maddening threads of arcane obligation. More than the gap between generations, more than the dwindling of old ways, the Chinese mothers most fear that their own hopes and truths—the secret gardens of the spirit that they have cultivated in the very worst of times—will not take root. A Chinese mother's responsibility here is to "give [my daughter] my spirit." The Joy Luck Club, begun in 1939 San Francisco, was a re-creation of the Club founded by Suyuan Woo in a beleaguered Chinese city. There, in the stench of starvation and death, four women told their "good stories," tried their luck with mah-jongg, laughed, and "feasted" on scraps. Should we, thought Suyuan, "wait for death or choose our own happiness?" Now, the Chinese women in America tell their stories (but not to their daughters or to one another): in China, an unwilling bride uses her wits, learns that she is "strong. . .like the wind"; another witnesses the suicide of her mother; and there are tales of terror, humiliation and despair. One recognizes fate but survives. But what of the American daughters—in turn grieved, furious, exasperated, amused ("You can't ever tell a Chinese mother to shut up")? The daughters, in their confessional chapters, have attempted childhood rebellions—like the young chess champion; ever on maternal display, who learned that wiles of the chessboard did not apply when opposing Mother, who had warned her: "Strongest wind cannot be seen." Other daughters—in adulthood, in crises, and drifting or upscale life-styles—tilt with mothers, one of whom wonders: "How can she be her own person? When did I give her up?"
With lantern-lit tales of old China, a rich humanity, and an acute ear for bicultural tuning, a splendid first novel—one that matches the vigor and sensitivity of Maxine Hong Kingston (The Warrior Woman, 1976; China Men, 1980) in her tributes to the abundant heritage of Chinese-Americans.Pub Date: March 22, 1989
ISBN: 0143038095
Page Count: -
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1989
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SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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