A satirical examination of the stars and fans of the music industry.
A recently canceled K-Pop band member known by his fans as “the Hot One” bides his time in the McMansion of a Chinese American psychologist he meets in the aisles of H Mart.
At the height of a successful career as the eldest (and best-looking) member of a K-Pop band, Sang Duri finds his life crashing down around him when the lyrics of his latest single stoke the friction among the nations of Korea, China, and Japan. In an attempt to avoid the public eye and spare his bandmates from further scrutiny, Duri convinces a psychologist—the nameless narrator of Ma-Kellams’ novel—to let him stay with her family in their palatial home. The psychologist, already unhappy in her marriage, is sympathetic to Duri’s plight and agrees to take him in. As they spend more and more time together, the lines of their complicated relationship begin to blur until it is unclear who is actually relying on whom. Little do they know that Duri’s disappearance from the spotlight will result in a shocking act of violence that will rock the music industry to its core. While Ma-Kellam’s novel is a scathing indictment of fandom and the way the industry often turns a blind eye to the mental health of its stars, the book lacks the charm and depth of character necessary to keep readers fully engaged. The use of footnotes—explaining everything from different types of plastic surgery to what the H in H Mart stands for—may be clever, but it feels unnecessary to the story and distracts from the main plot, which struggles to get off the ground.
A satirical examination of the stars and fans of the music industry.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781668018378
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.
Three siblings on very different paths learn that their family home may be haunted by secrets.
Eldest daughter Beth is alone with her fading mother as she takes her final breath and says something about Beth’s long-departed brother and sister, who may not have disappeared forever. Beth is still reeling from the loss of her mother when her estranged siblings show up. Michael, the youngest, hasn’t been home since their father’s disappearance seven years ago. In the meantime, he’s outgrown his siblings, trading his share of the family troubles for a high-paying job in San Jose. Nicole, the middle child, has been overpowered by addiction and prioritized tuning out reality over any sense of responsibility, much to Beth’s disgust. Though their mother’s death marks an ending for the family, it’s also a beginning, as the three siblings realize when they find a disturbing videotape among their parents’ belongings. The video, from 1999, sheds suspicion on their father’s disappearance, linking it to a long-unsolved neighborhood mystery. Was it just a series of unfortunate circumstances that broke the family apart, or does something more sinister underlie the sadness they’ve all found in life? In chapters that rotate among the family’s first-person narratives, the siblings take turns digging up stories and secrets in their search for solace.
Answers are hard to come by in this twisting tale designed to trick and delight.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9798212182843
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bold, thoughtful, and delicate at once, addressing life’s biggest questions through artfully crafted scenes and characters.
A sweeping exploration of choice, chance, class, race, and genetic engineering in three generations of a Chinese American family.
Khong’s follow-up to her sweet, slim debut—Goodbye, Vitamin (2017)—is again about parents and children but on a more ambitious scale, portraying three generations in what feel like three linked novellas, or somehow also like three connected gardens. The first begins in 1999 New York City, where Lily Chen stands next to a man at an office party who wins a big-screen TV in the raffle. He insists she take it; he is Matthew Maier, heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, and has all the TVs he needs. On their first date, they go to Paris after dinner, and as this section ends, they’ve had their first child. The second part of the book moves to 2021 on an island off the coast of Washington state. It’s narrated by Lily’s now-15-year-old son, Nick; his father is nowhere in sight, at least for now. The closing section unfolds in 2030 in the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s told by Lily’s now elderly mother, May, with an extended flashback to her youth in China during the Cultural Revolution and her first years in the U.S. As a budding scientist, May was fascinated by genetics. Of the lotus flowers she studied at university, she observes, “Raindrop-shaped buds held petals that crept closer, each day, to unfurling. As humans we were made of the same stuff, but their nucleotides were coded such that they grew round, green leaves instead of our human organs, our beating hearts.” This concern for how and why we turn out the way we do animates the book on every level, and along with science, social constructs like race and class play major roles. Every character is dear, and every one of them makes big mistakes, causing a ripple effect of anger and estrangement that we watch with dismay, and hope.
Bold, thoughtful, and delicate at once, addressing life’s biggest questions through artfully crafted scenes and characters.Pub Date: April 30, 2024
ISBN: 9780593537251
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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