Once again, the Gears combine archeological findings with a tale of action and mystic hoohah (People of the Sea, 1993, etc.)and here, unfortunately, billows of talk. This time, the people are those whose remains and artifacts were discovered in Florida—people who lived about 8,000 years ago and were raiders, with darts the weapons of choice, who staked their dead in pond bottoms. Gentle Pondwader, a revered teenaged albino (dubbed the Lightning Boy), has a heavy burden. The seer Dogtooth has told him that inside his chest is a hatching Lightning Bird that will grow up and out. Obviously Pondwader has quite a future. But watching, and plotting to capture Pondwader, is cruel Cottonmouth—of the prime raiding tribe—who believes that the boy has the power to kill the Four Shining Eagles that will bring destruction on the world. Meanwhile, Cottonmouth also burns with desire for the woman he loved, the great warrior woman Musselwhite of another clan—the clan, he believes, that killed their little son Glade. Cottonmouth's warriors capture Diver, the woman's husband (thought dead at first), and use him as a magnet to attract Musselwhite, now married to Pondwader. Plans are made, alliances between clans sealed, and the stealthy creep to rescue Diver begins. Along the way, Pondwader does brave warrior things and has some first-class visions featuring the Lightning Bird and a doll once belonging to Glade. The characters are a talky bunch given to zingers like ``Great Muskrat Above'' and ``seagull dung!,'' or to sermonettes like this one from Cottonmouth to Diver: ``To be is to be related . . . Separateness is an allusion we create to justify our wrongdoings.'' Beyond such highfalutin expostulations, there's some nasty work with darts and sexual doings with Black Rain, Pondwader's naughty mother. Mythic fantasy, some action, and tiresome chat: not the Gears' best.
Pub Date: Nov. 27, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-85852-3
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
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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