Think of it as a Korean rejoinder to The Name of the Rose, with some Kazantzakis thrown in for good measure.
A deepening mystery with a religious edge—and a world away from the weak tea of Dan Brown.
Sgt. Nam is a man who is neither here nor there. From a small country town in Korea, he had an adolescence so blank that it "left no memories, sad or happy.” He is not especially good at his job but not bad, either, and the job “afforded neither satisfaction nor regret.” He became a cop after dropping out of an utterly mediocre university. What he does know, with the passage of time, is that time passes too quickly, and now his own life is quickened by the discovery of an odd manuscript surrounding an even odder missing persons case, the disappeared person in question a seminarian who, as his writings reveal, had been concocting a decidedly contrarian version of Christianity that would have occasioned an auto-da-fé in an earlier time. For Sgt. Nam, “whose life had long been spent among statements written in a clichéd style full of Chinese characters, the words were barely comprehensible.” Yet, finally engaged, he presses on, hoping to find clues in the godly fellow’s writings, even as Min Yoseop’s manuscript becomes more pointed and less acquiescent to the orthodox view: if the meek and the poor are the inheritors and true owners of the world, then why do they have nothing? And more, as the protagonist asks Jesus, “Why did you so rashly show a miracle you will not employ again? Don’t you realize that you will only be able to impress them again with an even greater miracle?” Adultery, apostasy, homicide, assumed identities—all figure in the tale, even if its dominant tone is one of anomie. The story takes time to unfold, and the close is a little too obvious, but it’s an engaging intellectual mystery all the same.
Think of it as a Korean rejoinder to The Name of the Rose, with some Kazantzakis thrown in for good measure.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62897-119-4
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.
An ambitious scientific experiment wreaks horrendous toll in the Booker-winning British author’s disturbingly eloquent sixth novel (after When We Were Orphans, 2000).
Ishiguro’s narrator, identified only as Kath(y) H., speaks to us as a 31-year-old social worker of sorts, who’s completing her tenure as a “carer,” prior to becoming herself one of the “donors” whom she visits at various “recovery centers.” The setting is “England, late 1990s”—more than two decades after Kath was raised at a rural private school (Hailsham) whose students, all children of unspecified parentage, were sheltered, encouraged to develop their intellectual and especially artistic capabilities, and groomed to become donors. Visions of Brave New World and 1984 arise as Kath recalls in gradually and increasingly harrowing detail her friendships with fellow students Ruth and Tommy (the latter a sweet, though distractible boy prone to irrational temper tantrums), their “graduation” from Hailsham and years of comparative independence at a remote halfway house (the Cottages), the painful outcome of Ruth’s breakup with Tommy (whom Kath also loves), and the discovery the adult Kath and Tommy make when (while seeking a “deferral” from carer or donor status) they seek out Hailsham’s chastened “guardians” and receive confirmation of the limits long since placed on them. With perfect pacing and infinite subtlety, Ishiguro reveals exactly as much as we need to know about how efforts to regulate the future through genetic engineering create, control, then emotionlessly destroy very real, very human lives—without ever showing us the faces of the culpable, who have “tried to convince themselves. . . . That you were less than human, so it didn’t matter.” That this stunningly brilliant fiction echoes Caryl Churchill’s superb play A Number and Margaret Atwood’s celebrated dystopian novels in no way diminishes its originality and power.
A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience. Send a copy to the Swedish Academy.Pub Date: April 11, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4339-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
The mother of all presidential cover-ups is the centerpiece gimmick in this far-fetched thriller from first-novelist Baldacci, a Washington-based attorney. In the dead of night, while burgling an exurban Virginia mansion, career criminal Luther Whitney is forced to conceal himself in a walk-in closet when Christine Sullivan, the lady of the house, arrives in the bedroom he's ransacking with none other than Alan Richmond, President of the US. Through the one-way mirror, Luther watches the drunken couple engage in a bout of rough sex that gets out of hand, ending only when two Secret Service men respond to the Chief Executive's cries of distress and gun down the letter-opener-wielding Christy. Gloria Russell, Richmond's vaultingly ambitious chief of staff, orders the scene rigged to look like a break-in and departs with the still befuddled President, leaving Christy's corpse to be discovered at another time. Luther makes tracks as well, though not before being spotted on the run by agents from the bodyguard detail. Aware that he's shortened his life expectancy, Luther retains trusted friend Jack Graham, a former public defender, but doesn't tell him the whole story. When Luther's slain before he can be arraigned for Christy's murder, Jack concludes he's the designated fall guy in a major scandal. Meanwhile, little Gloria (together with two Secret Service shooters) hopes to erase all tracks that might lead to the White House. But the late Luther seems to have outsmarted her in advance with recurrent demands for hush money. The body count rises as Gloria's attack dogs and Jack search for the evidence cunning Luther's left to incriminate not only a venal Alan Richmond but his homicidal deputies. The not-with-a-bang-but-a-whimper climax provides an unsurprising answer to the question of whether a US president can get away with murder. For all its arresting premise, an overblown and tedious tale of capital sins. (Film rights to Castle Rock; Book-of-the-Month selection)
Pub Date: Jan. 18, 1996
ISBN: 0-446-51996-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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