A sharp, witty, and often moving account of an ancient nation on life support.
A Greek man struggles under the weight of debt, the dissolution of his marriage, and cultural upheaval.
Panos’ life is as precarious as the continued survival of his country; he’s a journalist demoted to freelance status, and he hasn’t been paid in months. Banks are constantly calling him, hounding him for the mortgage payments on a modest home he can no longer afford. His cellphone gets cut off, and the lights at home go dark. He can barely afford to provide his family with food, and he’s worried he’ll soon be fired for his lackluster performance. He starts to experience what could be the signs of serious heart failure, but he no longer has health insurance. His son seethes with disrespectful contempt for him, and his wife kicks him out of the house. Panos sunk whatever money the family once had into land he inherited from his family in hopes of developing it into a lucrative resort, and he waits interminably for the settlement of a court case stymying its fruition. All the while, he searches for his former classmate Stavros, derisively called Socrates by peers, for some sort of answer to his life’s woes. In his first book, author Nejad paints a discomfiting picture of a nation in crisis, not only wrestling with financial catastrophe, but with the sustainment of its collective soul. Greece is not merely broke, but broken, and the historical womb of democracy has degenerated into bureaucratic chaos, opportunism, and despair. Mercifully, the author leavens the mood with antic comedy, often reminiscent of the kind of free-wheeling humor one might find in the writings of Joseph Heller. Also, despite the cloud of cynicism that hangs over a beleaguered Greece, Nejad refuses to surrender to it fully. “The most important thing is that this is not the end. I am a man, I am Greek, and this is a country with a big history. We will show them.” The dialogue tends to meander, resulting in a bloated work that should have been shorter. The affecting portrayal of a country and culture on the brink and the punchy humor, however, make the long road one worth traveling.
A sharp, witty, and often moving account of an ancient nation on life support.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5049-9889-5
Page Count: 434
Publisher: AuthorHouseUK
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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