Although it ends on a half-heartedly optimistic note, the novel leaves a bitter aftertaste of unresolved anger.
Idemitsu has written an autobiographical first novel about a young Japanese woman who comes to America to study and stays to marry, raise a child, and find her identity as a woman caught between two cultures.
The four daughters of extremely wealthy Japanese businessman Morimasa Morimoto grow up believing it is “their duty to devote themselves to him” although he and his wife, Sadako, pay them little attention. The eldest, smartest daughter, Hiroko, moves to New York promising to become a successful artist. The second and third daughters, sweet, pretty Eiko and the usually hostile Fusako, marry to please their father. While Idemitsu moves frequently into flashbacks to flesh out the stories of the individual Morimoto women and show the ways in which each is emotionally damaged, the novel primarily focuses on the evolution of introverted youngest daughter Sakiko. While attending college at UCLA in 1964, she meets Paul, an artist and teacher. When she becomes pregnant, she reluctantly has the baby to keep Paul in her life although she fears her family’s reaction. She marries Paul in a passive trance before the baby’s birth. Her sisters in Japan voice their disapproval, her mother doesn’t respond at all, but her father sends cash. Having a baby, Sakiko feels needed for the first time. She tries to navigate the seemingly hostile white American world while remembering various painful moments from her Japanese childhood, including her mother’s neglect, Fusako’s cruelty, and the instance of physical assault every coming-of-age story seems to require lately. Gradually she grows more independent (although family money means she's never at financial risk). Meanwhile, Paul’s character remains amorphous. He pursues an affair with Sakiko’s sister Hiroko, perhaps the novel’s most fragile character, whose desire to please her father overwhelms whatever artistic talent she may have. Yet he genuinely seems to care for Sakiko and wants her to grow stronger, even admonishing her to learn to say “no.” Neither Sakiko nor the reader can tell if he is a womanizer with sensitive pretensions or someone more complex.
Although it ends on a half-heartedly optimistic note, the novel leaves a bitter aftertaste of unresolved anger.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63405-958-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Chin Music Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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