An earnest but dour debut.
A former Korean film star reunites with her three adult children just as their lives begin to implode.
At the height of her fame, Soong Nan was Korea’s Elizabeth Taylor, but she harbors a secret that could topple her fame: She is the daughter of a comfort woman and an occupying Japanese soldier. When she is 14, she walks 100 miles south to Seoul, where she hopes no one will guess her Japanese heritage. Once there, she steals a handful of grapes from a fruit vendor, who chases her into the street, where she is hit by a limousine. The car’s occupant, renowned movie producer Park Dong Jin, gathers the unconscious girl in his arms and then laughs when he realizes she is faking. “What we have here is an actress.” She is delivered to a world of tutors and servants, who groom her to become Korea’s greatest actress and Dong Jin’s wife. The storyline opens 50 years later. Soong Nan, now retired and twice widowed, has, over the years, earned and lost fortunes, murdered a man and seduced another to suppress his blackmail threats—all, she believes, for her family’s legacy. Believing, finally, that the past is past, she travels to Hawaii to spend time with her three children (two by Dong Jin and one by her American husband, Captain Henry Lee). But she finds her son has become an impotent, selfish drunk; her daughter Won Ju has married a womanizing “haole” Hawaiian after recovering from a brutal rape; and her “American” UC Berkeley English major daughter Darian only understands her Korean heritage through books. Soong Nan’s only hope is her 15-year-old grandson Brandon, who pays entirely too much attention to his uncle’s stripper-wife, a native Hawaiian. Told in alternating chapters from each family member’s point of view, this tale reveals and examines Korean and Hawaiian cultural traits that both define and undermine family ties.
An earnest but dour debut.Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-56947-420-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Soho
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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