Where the sun always shines, dark shadows will follow.
In Lisick’s (Yokohama Threeway: And Other Small Shames, 2013, etc.) debut novel, a former indie it girl comes to terms with the reality that she is no longer, in fact, it.
Her name is Edie. Or is it? The regulars at the bar think they know her, though they don’t. Edie’s been at this job, slinging the same old drinks, same old bar talk, “not doing shit,” really, for decades. She’s spent many a late night honing that skill, but now, at 45 years of age, she’s realizing she should’ve probably been sharpening others—like learning how to use a cellphone or, better yet, the internet. An erstwhile darling of the late-1990s underground party scene in San Francisco, Edie made bucking conformity her thing, so much so that when all her friends moved away and got jobs after the dot-com boom, she stubbornly stayed put in her sketchy Mission warehouse apartment. When her mother dies, Edie’s left to put her Silicon Valley ranch house on the market. As someone with an aversion to “adulting,” things don’t go over well for Lisick’s sulky protagonist. Tedious as it is to read about Edie’s self-inflicted struggles, Lisick’s languid prose has a magnetic pull to it (not dissimilar to the experience of watching a Noah Baumbach film). It’s pleasurable to tag along on Lisick’s winding tour through the Bay Area, even if the guide is kind of a drag. Oscillating between booze and boredom, Edie salts her wounds while bemoaning the “self-affirming inspirational platitude graffiti” that’s become rampant in her hometown. Ironically, though, Edie’s been avoiding clichés for so long that she’s inevitably become one. She does eventually learn how to navigate the web, but her self-awareness has a long way to go. Lisick’s stringent humor is what makes this tale worth reading, but the scant growth her character makes toward the book's end just doesn’t feel warranted.
Where the sun always shines, dark shadows will follow.Pub Date: March 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7333672-0-2
Page Count: 244
Publisher: 7.13 Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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