This tale of identity and privilege never shakes off its sense of running a mechanical course.
A neglected 9-year-old biracial child adopted by a powerful white family grows up to fulfill his potential only to confront a secret which will recast his entire sense of self.
The question haunting Umrigar’s (The Story Hour, 2014, etc.) seventh novel is: when? When will the chickens come home to roost? After Anton Vesper’s new father, Judge David Coleman, manipulates both the child and his crack-addict mother, Juanita, in order to cement Anton’s adoption? David and his trusting wife, Delores, lost their only son, James, in a car crash, and while Anton will never replace James, David thinks fostering the boy will help Delores heal. Soon the judge is convinced that all parties (except Juanita) will be better off with Anton living with the Colemans permanently. The son of a senator and tapped for the governorship himself, David has powerful friends who help ensure a lengthy prison term for Juanita, and when her release is imminent, David persuades her, with lies, to relinquish custody of her son. Years pass. Anton—also lied to—thrives, studies at Harvard, and is elected attorney general, but the reckoning is unavoidable. Umrigar’s conscientious, one-track story doesn’t offer much in the way of nuance. Characters are simple, plot developments easy to predict, and the racial lessons heavily underscored. David abuses his power; Juanita, poor, black, and unsophisticated, is “railroaded by a bunch of powerful white men”; and Anton had “three parents in his life [who] had each betrayed him.” While the author delivers her morally explicit story in an efficient, readable fashion, the inevitability of its outcome renders it earthbound.
This tale of identity and privilege never shakes off its sense of running a mechanical course.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-244224-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
A heartfelt tale of love too stubborn to surrender to human frailties.
When Chi Chi Donatelli gave famous crooner Saverio Armandonada a manicure on a 1930s New Jersey beach, little did she know that the swanky singer would change her life.
After his childhood sweetheart married another man, Saverio left the security of his job on the factory line in Detroit, earning his father’s disapproval but opening wide the door to success as a big-band singer. Along his way to stardom, Saverio changed his name to Tony Arma and discovered a talent for romancing—but never marrying—the ladies. But once he meets Chi Chi, his bachelor days are numbered. From a large, boisterous Italian family, Chi Chi is eager to have a life like Tony’s, with the freedom to sing and travel the country. She wants no part of marriage with its shackles. Soon Chi Chi and Tony are touring together, eventually developing a profitable shtick, with Chi Chi writing bestselling songs and Tony serenading them to dreamy audiences. It’s only a matter of time before Tony proposes. After all, unlike his other girls, Chi Chi offers Tony not only beauty and charm, but also the stability of a home. The lovers’ work in the entertainment industry gives way to a marriage blessed with babies yet held apart by war. Once reunited, Chi Chi’s independence and Tony’s philandering further fracture their marriage. But as Tony’s path wends from woman to woman, Chi Chi forges a new life on her own terms. A mistress of the sweeping family saga, bestselling author Trigiani (Kiss Carlo, 2017, etc.) sets Chi Chi and Tony’s lifelong love affair against the grand stage of World War II through the postwar boom years and the women’s liberation movement, tracing a society catching up with Chi Chi’s determination to control her own financial and personal freedom.
A heartfelt tale of love too stubborn to surrender to human frailties.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-231925-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.
A novelist tries to adapt to her ever changing reality as her world slowly disappears.
Renowned Japanese author Ogawa (Revenge, 2013, etc.) opens her latest novel with what at first sounds like a sinister fairy tale told by a nameless mother to a nameless daughter: “Long ago, before you were born, there were many more things here…transparent things, fragrant things…fluttery ones, bright ones….It’s a shame that the people who live here haven’t been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that’s just the way it is on this island.” But rather than a twisted bedtime story, this depiction captures the realities of life on the narrator's unnamed island. The small population awakens some mornings with all knowledge of objects as mundane as stamps, valuable as emeralds, omnipresent as birds, or delightful as roses missing from their minds. They then proceed to discard all physical traces of the idea that has disappeared—often burning the lifeless ones and releasing the natural ones to the elements. The authoritarian Memory Police oversee this process of loss and elimination. Viewing “anything that fails to vanish when they say it should [as] inconceivable,” they drop into homes for inspections, seizing objects and rounding up anyone who refuses—or is simply unable—to follow the rules. Although, at the outset, the plot feels quite Orwellian, Ogawa employs a quiet, poetic prose to capture the diverse (and often unexpected) emotions of the people left behind rather than of those tormented and imprisoned by brutal authorities. Small acts of rebellion—as modest as a birthday party—do not come out of a commitment to a greater cause but instead originate from her characters’ kinship with one another. Technical details about the disappearances remain intentionally vague. The author instead stays close to her protagonist’s emotions and the disorientation she and her neighbors struggle with each day. Passages from the narrator’s developing novel also offer fascinating glimpses into the way the changing world affects her unconscious mind.
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-87060-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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