A pleasant but unremarkable work of immigrant literature.
Choy’s second novel, about growing up Chinese in Canada, is a companion piece to his prize-winning debut (The Jade Peony, 1997).
In his debut, Choy focused on three children in Vancouver’s Chinatown before WWII; here, he revisits that family, the Chens, from a different perspective. Narrator Kiam-Kim is only three in 1926 when he arrives in Canada with his father and his grandmother, Poh-Poh; they are fleeing famine and war, and the disintegration of China will form the story’s backdrop. They have been sponsored by Third Uncle, a prosperous warehousing merchant who finds them accommodations. Kiam’s mother died young. Father must not marry again, to avoid upsetting his wife’s ghost (“Ghosts and Old China haunted us”), but a companion is arranged for him, to be known as Stepmother. She will give birth to a girl and then a boy; along with an adopted orphan, they form the trio of The Jade Peony. Superficially, this is Kiam’s story, the First Son who must set an example, and who has an unusual best friend in Jack O’Connor, the white boy who lives next door. Kiam experiences the familiar adolescent rites of passage, such as the showdown with a deadly street gang and heavy petting with Chinese neighbor Jenny, though no actual dates, for they would involve older escorts (“Chinatown’s idea of birth control”). Bound by this web of family and neighbors, Kiam’s questioning of traditional mores is limited, even as he is upstaged by Poh-Poh, who dominates the novel; Father and Stepmother are ciphers beside her. Not only does she decide Stepmother’s duties, she inculcates in the children the significance of ghosts and curses (her own curses are legendary). Before her death, she tells Kiam the painful secret of how Father was conceived, and it takes a full-dress ceremony to exorcise her ghost.
A pleasant but unremarkable work of immigrant literature.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-59051-215-4
Page Count: 454
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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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