Pedophilia, Satanism, a closeted politician, and an astonishing number of semi-closeted priests reunite a prosperous Irish Catholic shrink and his long-lost love, now a Ph.D. candidate but still ravishing. Father Greeley (Wages of Sin, p. 627; et many al.) puts his big, familiar cast of Chicagoans through incredible punishment, but they always come up smiling. Kathleen Leary married big, handsome Brien Donahue instead of smallish, clever boyfriend Kieran O'Kerrigan back in the 70's because her dominating older brother James thought it best. Now James is a bishop; Kieran is a psychoanalyst; Kathleen is a mother and student; and Brien is a wife-beating, alcoholic, closeted homosexual lawyer whose lover has been calling Kathleen when he's not busy arranging his Satanic rituals. Oh, and Brien is also about to announce his candidacy for the upcoming senatorial primary. James, a stuffed-shirt careerist, tries to keep a lid on Kathleen and Brien's problems—while also trying to squelch a suburban couple who are suing the church for reassigning their young son's abuser, a pedophile priest, to another parish, which is how the archdiocese has been handling its pedophilia problems for years. James involves Kieran in the investigation of the pedophilia business, unaware that his sister, after years of separation, feels her love for Dr. O'Kerrigan reawakening. Meanwhile, Kathleen, who has the glorious red hair and magnificent breasts without which no Greeley heroine is complete, hacks away at her Ph.D., mothers three teenaged daughters, endures incredible abuse from her alcoholic mother, alcoholic husband, and alcoholic in-laws, and still, good Chicago Irish-Catholic politician that she is, agrees to put off a divorce until after the primary. Events, however, overtake everybody. Maddening. Nobody writing today has a better handle than Greeley does on his important and colorful corners of the world, but to get those insights invariably requires swallowing great doses of treacly, fake-Irish dialogue and swoony, moony romance. And, no matter how many demons he trots onstage, the outcome is never in doubt.
Pub Date: March 24, 1993
ISBN: 0-399-13723-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1992
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
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