Though the novel is quiet and occasionally dense with historical exposition, it offers a valuable window into Korean history...
Two sisters, estranged by circumstance, seek to forge a bond and understand their individual and shared histories.
Inja and Miran are near twins. Remarkably close in age, both are artistic and sensitive. But when the novel opens, in 1950, the two girls live on separate continents: When Miran’s parents left South Korea for the United States, they were only able to travel with one child. They chose Miran, who had been in poor health as an infant, and left Inja behind with her maternal grandparents, aunt and uncle. Though the family had planned to return for Inja, North Korean troops invade South Korea and war breaks out. Inja and her relatives are displaced to Busan, enduring hunger, cold, and constant instability; in America, Miran struggles to understand her parents’ anxiety and helplessness as they wait for news. The novel stretches from the early 1950s through the mid-'70s, alternating between Inja’s adolescence in a divided Korea and Miran’s coming-of-age in a differently tumultuous USA. Based loosely on Kim’s (The Calligrapher’s Daughter, 2009) own family history, as detailed in the author’s note, this elegant though frequently sentimental novel relies on the power of family secrets to propel the reader through the sisters’ lives. Inja, contemplating all she does not know of her American family—and vice versa—notes “the strange kind of power one gained from holding secrets.” Will Inja ever know the sister who is practically her twin? Will either sister ever truly understand Korea or America, or will they continue to exist in the space between?
Though the novel is quiet and occasionally dense with historical exposition, it offers a valuable window into Korean history as well as to issues like immigration and assimilation that couldn’t be more relevant today.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-98782-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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
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
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