Superlative historical adventure, narrated with plenty of action and a good feel for the era.
The sequel to Over the Wine-Dark Sea (2001) follows the fearless cousins Menedemos and Sostratos from their native Rhodes to Athens and back during one of Greece’s worst civil wars.
For those just tuning in, Menedemos and Sostratos are a somewhat Patty Duke–ish pair of cousins living shortly after the death of Alexander the Great: Menedemos is a sailor (ambitious, handsome, bold, impatient), while Sostratos is a scholar (cunning, cool-headed, ascetic, calculating). They make a good pair, each complementing the other’s weaknesses and strengths, and they’re both bankrolled by their wealthy fathers (the merchant brothers Philodemos and Lysistratos), who see the need to look beyond the shores of Rhodes to keep the family fortunes in good shape. The last time out, Menedemos and Sostratos ventured to a then-obscure Rome and returned with untold booty. This time they’re off to Athens—hardly uncharted territory in third-century b.c., but a dangerous trip all the same, since just now the Aegean is infested with pirates and the whole of Greece is being rocked by a bloody war between the fleets of Antigonos and Ptolemaios. The cousins need to raise money for their family, since trade is badly in a slump now that war has broken out, and they set off to sell a cache of Egyptian emeralds, along with their rarest treasure of all: a skull that Sostratos believes to be that of a gryphon (the mythological beast part lion, part bird). There are the usual adventures on the high seas (pirates, storms) and a good deal of action on shore (women, politics). But with the help of their faithful skipper Diokles, Menedemos, and Sostratos manage, like Odysseus, to make it home in one piece.
Superlative historical adventure, narrated with plenty of action and a good feel for the era.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-87222-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2002
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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