Written with great control, the novel unfolds as surprisingly as life often does.
A Chinese singer tries to avoid becoming a political pawn after a tour of the United States puts him at odds with his government.
Though 37 years old and a well-established vocalist in his native China, Yao Tian seems curiously naïve and passive. Things seem to happen to him; he doesn’t make them happen. At the end of his government-sponsored troupe’s American tour, he's invited by a political activist he knew in China to perform at a celebration for Taiwan’s National Day. He accepts, not out of any political convictions but because the fee he's offered will cover part of his daughter’s tuition at an expensive Beijing prep school. The performance lands him in trouble back home, where he’s threatened with the losses of employment and his passport. Those threats compel him to return to the United States, where he hopes his wife and daughter can eventually join him. The rest of the matter-of-fact narrative documents his life in America and the attempts by the Chinese government to besmirch his reputation, to turn what happens to him into a morality play about the consequences for an artist who betrays his homeland. Written with terse command, in short chapters and without literary flourish, the novel itself is no morality tale. Things happen, life is lived, a very different life than the one Tian might have known had he agreed to quit performing abroad and embarrassing his country. Far from his family and native culture, he processes personal tragedy, professional upheaval, and unlikely romance. Downward mobility takes his performing career from the concert hall to casinos to performing on the streets. Yet he doesn’t seem to regret his exchange of collective security in China for individual freedom in the U.S. Though he had never considered himself particularly political, he becomes more acutely aware of the political dimensions of his position. As he loses some of his voice as a singer, he gains more of a voice as a songwriter. He makes a life for himself, and it is one that both surprises and satisfies him.
Written with great control, the novel unfolds as surprisingly as life often does.Pub Date: July 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4879-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Sweet, sharp, and satisfying.
Their daughter’s wedding stirs up uncomfortable memories for a divorced couple.
The day before the ceremony, the bride’s mother, Gail Baines, second in command at the Ashton School in Baltimore, learns that not only has she been passed over to replace the retiring headmistress, but the new recruit is bringing her deputy with her. The lack of people skills that have cost Gail this promotion are evident even in that initial scene; she’s a classic cranky Tyler protagonist, given to blurting out her opinions with little consideration for others’ feelings. Her first-person narration also reveals her to be touchingly vulnerable, convinced that daughter Debbie, prettier and more polished than she, will inevitably prefer husband-to-be Kenneth’s overbearing, better-off parents. Although her divorce from Max was amicable, Gail considers him a bit of a slacker, and isn’t best pleased when he turns up with a rescue cat in tow and says he has to stay with her because Kenneth is horribly allergic. A startling revelation from Debbie, fresh from her pre-wedding “Day of Beauty,” immediately divides the exes, who have very different opinions about how their daughter should handle this crisis. It also leads to Gail’s revelation of the infidelity that led to their divorce, though not in the way readers might imagine. Laid-back Max is the only fully fleshed character here other than Gail, and the novel is very short, but Tyler’s touch is as delicate, her empathy for human beings and all their quirks as evident in her 25th work of fiction as it was in her first, published an astonishing 60 years ago. Gail’s acerbic observations about the wedding and all its participants, her wistful memories of her odd-couple romance with Max, and her account of their enforced intimacy over the three days surrounding the wedding alternate to poignant effect. The closing pages offer a happy ending that feels true to the characters and utterly deserved.
Sweet, sharp, and satisfying.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593803486
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
