An inspiring and informative, if tragic, tale of Taiwan.
Lee’s historical novel, translated from the Mandarin, Hoklo, and Japanese by Smith, recounts the true story of a man who massively expanded Taiwan’s banana trade during dark days of martial law.
Ngôo Tsín-suī is from an agricultural area in southern Taiwan. His goal is to benefit local farmers, improve product quality, and expand Taiwan’s dominance of the Japanese banana market. He has remarkable success, bolstered by his concern for the farmers’ finances and his negotiation skills. He rises to become the director of an industry group, and becomes known locally as the Banana King, but his life at his farm with his wife, Gio̍k-ìn, and their beloved water buffalo, Mari, is where his heart is. Taiwan is in a state of upheaval as World War II ends; Japanese colonizers leave, and Chinese Nationalists arrive. Tsín-suī, who speaks a native Taiwanese language, Hoklo, as well as Japanese, must now learn Mandarin. The resentful local population stages a revolt that the Chinese Nationalist government brutally puts down. Tsín-suī survives the aftermath and continues to flourish in the banana business, but his stature and reputation are threatened when corrupt officials fabricate a fraud case against him. Lee’s historical novel offers readers an impressive amount of detail about a difficult period of Taiwanese history and of a figure whose grand ambition ultimately didn’t succeed (as noted in a foreword). His characterization of Ngôo Tsín-suī as the face of Taiwanese success is highly readable as various challenges, including literal storms, swirl around him. However, readers may find that the granular level of detail sometimes bogs the story down. Lee’s depiction of Tsín-suī as an innovator who put cash in the hands of small farmers is inspiring, and his story offers life lessons as well as obvious warnings about authoritarian government. Smith’s translation uses natural, contemporary English while preserving what he can of the original languages (“He must have eaten some tshau-phang sweet potatoes. Must be that’s why his stomach is so bloated”), along with providing explanatory footnotes (in this case, defining tshau-phang as “giving off a rotting odor”).
An inspiring and informative, if tragic, tale of Taiwan.Pub Date: May 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781945049446
Page Count: 458
Publisher: Shadelandhouse Modern Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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