Two young writers from New Jersey got tired of the images of apathetic, pessimistic, cynical slackers that ``guys in their forties'' have been creating and set the record straight with a collection of short stories that offers honest snapshots of America's Generation X. They've selected stories with no agenda in mind—except that they didn't want to have an agenda, just good stories by ``some young people and what's happening in their worlds.'' All the tales demonstrate that cynicism and pessimism mix with hope, faith, passion, and principle. Often, people with every reason to give up don't. In ``Looking Out for Hope,'' Bryan Malessa's college graduate writes a powerful letter to Raymond Carver about not getting by on his minimum-wage job. And in Elizabeth Tippens's ``Back From the World,'' a broken-hearted maintenance worker, who has perversely decided not to get over the love of his life, learns that it's time to move on. In other stories, amoral drifters realize they do have principles. Dean Albarelli's Percodan-using ex-journalist poses as a supermarket security guard to bribe an equally lost shoplifter in ``Winterlude''; when they become lovers and she asks him to help her get even with her mother, he recognizes for the first time that there are limits to what he will do. And in ``Lovelock,'' Fred G. Leebron's ex-con doesn't take the obvious escape route from a one-night stand. Throughout, people are putting themselves back together after the likes of childhood abuse (Nicole Cooley's ``The Photograph Album'') and memory loss (Mitch Berman's ``Wabi''). Others are self-destructing in the false perfection of suburbia (Chris Hallman's ``Utopia Road'') or the conservative restraints of a law firm (David Foster Wallace's ``Girl with Curious Hair''). This succeeds because it doesn't read differently from any other collection of good writing. Every voice is strong, moving, and meaningful. (6 b&w linecuts, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 8, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-47449-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
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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