Somewhat superficial, funny, and short.
A college junior with an advice column discovers that following her own counsel is easier said than done.
Harriet lives a fairly standard college life: hanging out with her two closest friends, going to classes, drinking, and enduring hangovers—all while secretly dispensing wisdom to peers in her advice column, "Dear Emma." Each week, students write in with dating and friendship problems, and Harriet replies with clearheaded and thoughtful solutions. After all, Harriet’s been an observer for so long that she’s developed a knack for identifying the hidden fault lines in others’ lives. But when she meets the enigmatic Keith in her Spanish Civil War class, everything changes; she’s finally at the center of her own drama, and the weeks that follow are a flurry of excitement, study dates, and road trips. As their texts fizzle out, though, Harriet’s plunged into despair. As she continues to harp on Keith, everything seems to be going wrong around her: she’s fighting with her roommate; going to the civil war class is torture; she spots a pretty girl writing on Keith’s Facebook wall. Things get interesting when that girl, a senior named Remy, begins working the same library shift as Harriet, whom she begrudgingly begins to befriend; and when Remy writes Emma asking whether she should break things off with Keith, Harriet is forced to re-evaluate the way she views guys, friendship, and the integrity of her column. Heaney’s (Never Have I Ever, 2014) debut novel is a relatable depiction of modern college romance, and Harriet, despite her annoying obsession with Keith, has an endearingly humorous voice (“I have been waiting my whole life to quiz a hot guy in the library and now that it’s here I’m like, not ready”). However, the novel’s scope is so limited that it may not hold readers’ attention. College can indeed be a bubble, but Harriet’s sole focus on guys and day-to-day dramas precludes more complicated or long-term plotlines—which could have transformed Harriet from a merely humorous character into a well-rounded, satisfying one.
Somewhat superficial, funny, and short.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-455-53460-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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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