Readers should hardly notice the novel’s epic length, breezing through laudable characters and a global plot running at full...
In this military thriller, a coup in North Korea begets civil war, which, given the country’s chemical and nuclear weapons, could have worldwide repercussions.
The apparent redeployment of North Korean troops from the Demilitarized Zone surprises South Korean and American officers alike. They rightly surmise that a coup is under way against Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. Kim’s initially rumored assassination becomes a reality when millions who tuned in to the leader’s televised announcement witness his death. The resultant fighting in North Korea is between three factions: the Kim family, the Korean Workers’ Party, and the military. But other nations especially worry about North Korea’s “nuclear stockpile.” South Korea sends army units to secure the area by tackling the North’s nuclear facilities and chemical-weapons depots. North Korean civilians trying to escape via the country’s border with China, meanwhile, are getting shot by Chinese soldiers stationed there. Camps set up for the refugees are quickly overwhelmed by the staggering number of people who need food and water. China, like everyone else, is apprehensive about Kim’s armaments. The country decides to march troops into North Korea to find and destroy the nuclear weapons on its own. But an altercation between China and South Korea/U.S. allies is feasible and might spark a war. This swiftly paced, 510-page novel is a sequel to Bond’s 1989 Red Phoenix (with Patrick Larkin). A beginning recap forgoes any necessity to read the previous book, though it’s a treat to see returning characters like Col. Kevin Little at the DMZ. There’s no real central character, giving the narrative an appropriate expansiveness among its Korean, American, Chinese, and even Russian characters. Hero status is shared, too, and standouts include Col. Rhee Han-gil, who leads a brigade covertly into North Korean territory, and Cho Ho-jin, a spy for the Russians who ultimately aligns with South Korea. Bond and Carlson (Lash-Up, 2015, etc.) bounce the story from scene to scene like a tightly edited action movie, an impressive tempo kick-started in the opening when Little’s immediately under fire trying to help potential defectors fleeing to South Korea.
Readers should hardly notice the novel’s epic length, breezing through laudable characters and a global plot running at full tilt.Pub Date: March 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5196-3538-9
Page Count: 510
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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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