Thorough and thought-provoking.
Seven interconnected stories chronicle the multifaceted, often ugly life of the 21st-century Chinese immigrant.
Wang Ping begins her inquiry into the Chinese immigration experience on the mainland—specifically, in a Navy compound of family apartments on the East China Sea, where the only thing that a pair of sisters has in common is their desire to eventually have a bed to themselves. In the first story, “Where the Poppies Blow,” the plain, practical narrator grows a secret garden in the yard of the wealthy admiral, whose twin daughters have befriended the narrator’s charming younger sister. But in the following story, “Crush,” which presumably features the same pair of sisters, the narrator gets the upper hand. The family shelters a neighboring family from an onslaught of bullets. While the sister tries to charm the handsome neighbor boy, he is interested only in the narrator and her storytelling abilities. The sisters foreshadow Wan Li and Jeanne Shin, characters in two later stories, which take place after the women have immigrated to New York. In the title story, Wan Li is a prudent student who flits between rat-infested apartments in Flushing and Chinatown, working in restaurants while attending school. Though she improbably hooks rich, handsome Chinese playboy Peng, Wan Li doesn’t give in to the temptations of the capitalist West until she finds herself at the mercy of her mysteriously generous landlord, Genji. Meanwhile, Wan Li’s classmate, Jeanne, who narrates “Forage,” finds money and possessions all too alluring, and uses her body to attract the likes of Tiger (also the narrator of “House of Anything You Wish”), who mourns the wife and son he lost to a white man. Though well linked, the seven stories function independently, which not only speaks to the author’s narrative abilities, but also serves as a poignant metaphor for the splintered community she describes.
Thorough and thought-provoking.Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-56689-195-7
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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