Myerson follows up her acclaimed debut (Sleepwalking, 1995) with a similarly detailed study of family distress and dysfunction- -but this time there's a wild card: An unbalanced evangelist who inserts himself into the family's unstable dynamic, with catastrophic consequences. Frank Chapman is a bloody, sorry mess when Donna, her lover Will, and her sister Gayle find him semiconscious in a London park. The three get him to the hospital where Gayle works; and as the old widower recovers, she is both attracted to him and repelled; Inexplicably, he knows all about lovely Donna's twisted spine, which makes every day a painful trial for her, and he's certain that he can cure her. In time, Gayle is persuaded to let him try, and when Will is brought around too, Donna agrees to give it a shot. The faith healing works, and overnight Donna finds a new lust for life; she can't bring herself, however, to feel grateful to the unwashed, bizarre old man who made it possible. Gayle and Will visit Frank regularly to show their gratitude, even though they also find him difficult; as time passes, the two begin to take pleasure in each other's company, while Will and Donna become ever more estranged. During a family seaside vacation, complete with the sisters' mum, their brother Simon (a shiftless sponger with an unnatural affection for Gayle), and Frank, Gayle and Will's repressed passions emerge; they start an affair that continues back in London, even after Donna becomes pregnant. Frank, cut loose and left to fend for himself, festers in his own dark passions and memories, until a chance encounter with Will turns him from a healer for Jesus into an Old Testament avenger. Honest characterization and a flair for exposing family failings work as well here as before—and even if the portrayal of the outsider ultimately becomes heavy-handed, Myerson is clearly adept at chronicling the wrenching doubts at work in even the most intimate relations.
Pub Date: June 10, 1996
ISBN: 0-385-47507-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
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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