An engrossing fictional exploration of family, culture, and what it means to belong in both China and America.
Two sisters grow up without meeting and follow different but intersecting paths in 20th-century China and the United States.
In this novel, Meyer (Myths in Stone: Religious Dimensions of Washington, D.C., 2001) traces the temporal and spiritual journeys of the two daughters of an American missionary stationed in China before World War II. Victoria, the older one, is kidnapped as a child by a religious sect that sees her as its future leader. Livia, born after Victoria’s disappearance, endures an internment camp with her parents during the war, then grows up in midcentury America. The narrative moves back and forth between the two sisters as Victoria, now known as Bu’er, learns traditional healing and survives Mao’s ascendancy and the Cultural Revolution in an out-of-the-way village, gradually coming to terms with her role in the religious community. Meanwhile, Livia converts to Roman Catholicism, experiences the 1960s as a college student, pursues a Ph.D., and becomes a scholar of Chinese religion. As relations between China and the United States are restored in the 1970s and ’80s, Livia is able to return to her country of birth and promises her dying mother she will find out what happened to Victoria. The plot, sedate and expansive for most of the book, takes a Robert Ludlum–esque turn as Livia faces challenges from suspicious locals and government officials in her search for Victoria, but it returns to a more contemplative pace in the final chapters. Meyer is clearly knowledgeable about Chinese history and culture (an author’s note explains his personal connections to the country), and the text is full of rich details that enhance the book’s fully realized setting. Memorable secondary characters play key roles in both storylines, each distinctly drawn and thoroughly developed. The occasionally repetitive narrative (for instance, there are multiple conversations about Livia becoming a department chair at a college) could have been more tightly edited. But the tale avoids getting bogged down in philosophical discussions and maintains its momentum as the sisters undergo their separate religious evolutions.
An engrossing fictional exploration of family, culture, and what it means to belong in both China and America.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9966864-7-1
Page Count: 365
Publisher: IngramElliott Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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