An inventive, incisive novel about the psychology of modern China.
In Woo’s novel, a young woman attempts to break free from her life under communist rule.
Little Comrade is unfulfilled. The young woman works 12 hours a day on a factory assembly line in the People’s Republic of Qina. She sleeps in a bunk house with other workers, including her best friend, Bo Bo, who teases her about her lack of a boyfriend. Little Comrade claims she’ll find one soon, but she isn’t very taken with her options. Indeed, she feels ambivalent about much of her existence—a perspective that puts her at odds with the state-mandated patriotism she should be feeling. To highlight this contradiction, the novel takes the form of a pamphlet put out by the Qinese Bureau of Public Affairs. The second-person narration addresses Little Comrade as a hypothetical stand-in for an entire generation of women: “You want to move to a nicer place like this ‘America’ you have heard so much about…maybe you have always felt this way, ever since you were a baby girl in your father’s village, before you got a job at the factory in the big city. Do not fret, this book can help you overcome that tiresome and unwanted desire.” The guide advises Little Comrade on how to navigate her relationships, check her ambitions, and learn to appreciate her motherland, but can she suppress her dreams of a better life in America without killing the best part of herself? Woo’s prose is deceptively nimble. While the format could easily feel gimmicky, it proves incredibly adaptive, capturing moments of beauty and sorrow in addition to the frequent flourishes of humor: “The inhabitants are still living there, growing vegetables in Styrofoam boxes…old grannies and grandpas with their teeth missing, with shrunken, shriveled bodies. You, too, if you are lucky, dear Little Comrade, will look like them one day.” It’s a short, devastating read, one that will stick with the reader long after it’s over.
An inventive, incisive novel about the psychology of modern China.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9781989496626
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Buckrider Books
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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