Poignant and thoughtful, if not exactly riveting.
In Lu’s novel, a Buddhist monk flees Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge reign of terror in the 1970s and reappears in California decades later.
The story opens with the depiction of a gruesome death: Wu Huaiyu, a young Khmer Rouge officer, lies on the plaza of a small temple, his face flattened by the large fallen Buddha statue that he had been attempting to destroy. Watching the scene in horror are Tutu, a teenage girl who had recently become engaged to Wu Huaiyu, and Wu Lou, the temple’s last remaining monk. As a young boy, Wu Lou was rescued from a pond by an aging monk who saw potential in the lad and adopted him. One day, Wu Lou and his Master spotted a starving, orphaned child, Tutu, and took her under their protection. Tutu and Wu Lou were then raised as brother and sister, developing a deep bond. Now Tutu tells her brother that he must run and find his way to America to escape being killed by the military, promising, “I’ll find a way to go to the United States to find you.” The story jumps forward 50 years, to Los Angeles, where readers meet the novel’s narrator, Terry. He and his wife are immigrants from China, living in a house they bought through a Cambodian realtor—Tutu. Also living in Los Angeles, unbeknownst to Tutu, is Wu Lou. Lu’s narrative is more focused on the effect of Wu Lou’s life upon others (especially Tutu and Terry) than on his own experiences before reaching California (readers learn only about his time in Cambodia and his dedication to achieving a pure life). In easy-flowing, conversational prose, weaving a narrative that shifts back and forth in time, Lu intertwines the tales of Tutu and Terry with Terry’s musings on Buddhist philosophy and mysticism, including the belief in reincarnation. The novel also delves into the disturbing East Asian history during the 1960s and 1970s, vividly portraying the cruelty and violence inflicted by the Khmer Rouge.
Poignant and thoughtful, if not exactly riveting.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781960172082
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Pine Bush Publishing, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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