Only a writer who knows how closely bound are heartbreak and resilience could write stories as emotionally stirring as these.
An original and delightfully off-kilter debut collection about searching for a sense of belonging.
Set mostly in Chinese American communities in California, some of Au's stories explore the cost of immigration and its toll on families. In "The Richmond," for example, Mei laments being singled out by the cafeteria lady, who speaks differently to her than to her white classmates. She can't understand why her parents love their neighborhood, why her mother counsels her to accept that someone will always "label us as immigrants as if that were a bad thing." But just 11, Mei also doesn't yet understand the famine and genocide her parents fled, the haunting image of "Mama's childhood friend on her knees...as a soldier towered over her." Elsewhere, Au's characters find themselves adrift because of age ("This Is Me"); ambition ("Little Harlot"); or sexual orientation ("Louise"). In the devastating "Spider Love Song," Sophie is emotionally lost after her parents vanish. She carries on living with her grandmother, cooking as her mother taught her, still wearing an increasingly smelly elephant costume that she donned the day her parents disappeared. "We are waiting," Sophie tells a woman who tries to lure her away, a sign of strength rather than weakness. Au writes with keen understanding of children's need to see the good in their flawed parents; many stories turn on moments of children applying the balm of their imaginations to painful situations. In "Wearing My Skin," when Shelly inadvertently learns that her father didn't die, that he abandoned them, she doesn't lash out at her mother for lying. Instead, she imagines making a giant collage of her parents where they "stand next to each other...holding up each other's glossy dime-store dreams."
Only a writer who knows how closely bound are heartbreak and resilience could write stories as emotionally stirring as these.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-946724-20-5
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Acre
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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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