An engrossing fictionalized history that examines an ingenious and powerful Chinese ruler.
Xiong (The A to Z of Medieval China, 2010, etc.) tells the story of Chinese Emperor Taizong of Tang in this historical novel.
The China of the late Sui dynasty faces barbarian threats from outside its borders and rebellious barons within them. When Li Shimin’s father, the Duke of Tang, decides he must replace the sovereign in order to restore stability to the state, the teenager finds himself a general in command of a rebel army. His relatives become the rulers of the new Tang dynasty in 618, though their reign is just as fraught with intrigue and treachery as that of the Sui. Li Shimin turns out to be the shrewdest tactician of the family. In the July 2 coup, the crown prince “eliminated his challengers, effectively sidelined his father, and emerged as the true power-holder at court.” Forcing his father to abdicate the throne, Li Shimin becomes the Emperor of Tang. He then sets to ruling the fractured prefectures of China, adopting policies of benevolence and reconciliation and accepting critical appraisals from his court. He uses all his skills to bring his nation into a new golden age, going down in history as one of the greatest rulers China has ever known. Supplementary material includes a bibliography, chronology, and a 20-page glossary/dramatis personae that the reader should put to great use. The novel, more fictionalized history than historical fiction, essentially reads like a work of popular history, with many scenes dramatized. The book dispenses with superfluous plot elements of the sort one would expect to find in a historical novel but includes many explanatory passages that read as though they’ve been excerpted from a textbook. While this may sound stilted, it actually makes for an engaging cross-genre reading experience. It’s reminiscent of nothing so much as the pre-modern texts from which it takes its inspiration, where fact, legend, and anecdote sit comfortably side by side. The technique lends a compelling veracity to the events even if it forces Xiong to hold his characters at a greater distance from the reader.
An engrossing fictionalized history that examines an ingenious and powerful Chinese ruler.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-9-86-628666-7
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Airiti Press
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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