The acclaimed Danish author's first novelwhich follows into English translation his third, Smilla's Sense of Snow (1993), and second, Borderliners (1994)ingeniously reinvents the traditional family chronicle. Hoeg's ambitious narrative spans three and a half centuries, beginning with the tale of a megalomaniac nobleman (the Count) whose ``dream'' is to halt the passage of time and create a stasis in which his own preeminence remains forever unchallengedand, not incidentally, of scientifically demonstrating that the center of the Earth is located on his property. The Count's folly initiates a train of schemes and envisionings involving the son of his steward, the steward's wife, the unconventional family into which their son later marries, and their succeeding generations, all of which are characterized by a struggle between two conflicting impulses: the lust to acquire wealth and power and a selfless (literally, socialist) solidarity with the underprivileged. Hoeg fills the novel with colorful and vivid detail, expertly dramatizing a broad range of occupations and activities. His quirkily memorable characters include a charming young actor who fails to meet the standards of the lawless family (``Adonis brought his father and mother much sorrow, through his compassion for mankind''), and a spoiled beauty whose increasing alienation from her businesslike husband brings her into troublesome intimacy with their handsome young son. The dreamy distancing from reality that they all experience is powerfully underlined by magical-realist metaphors: An overcrowded tenement building sinks into the earth; fathers, surrendering authority to their sons, lose physical definition, blur before others' eyes, and eventually disappear. A fascinating further dimension is added by Hoeg's narrator, who addresses both readers and the novel's characters, lamenting his lack of full omniscience, laboring to puzzle out the meaning of the story of whichhe finally informs ushe is a central part. A brilliant and appealing workone that will make readers of Hoeg's varied and inventive novels impatient for his next.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-17138-6
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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