Like a drop of rain that holds the reflection of the world, crystalline and beautiful.
A fearful, tender, unexpectedly gifted boy in a Singapore fishing village finds that his fate is inextricably wound with that of his community.
"Decades later, the kampong would trace it all back to this very hour, waves draining the light from this slim, hungry moon." So begins Heng's second novel, a story scaffolded against a sweeping backdrop—the politics of colonialism, World War II in Southeast Asia, ecology, the inexorable forces of development and modernization—with very little of that ever mentioned, instead focusing on the experiences of the characters in language of perfect simplicity. It begins in 1941, when the territory of Singapore is “still governed by the Ang Mohs as it had been for the past century.” A small boy named Ah Boon goes out fishing with his Pa and somehow intuits the location of a mysterious island where the fish run denser than their nets can carry. This is the watershed hour referred to in the opening sentence, and its immediate effects are wholly positive. "While previously they’d subsisted on thin gruel with sweet potato, stringy bean sprouts, and the occasional scrawny chicken, now they feasted, day and night, on fish. They steamed them with ginger and freshly cut chilies; they chopped them up and sautéed the pieces with fragrant sambal, they fried them till the fins grew crispy, a delicious treat for the children." Meanwhile, Ah Boon has become close with his brilliant schoolmate Siok Mei, who was virtually orphaned when her parents left the country for political reasons but now shares with Ah Boon many idyllic days of childhood. The good times screech to a halt when war arrives and the Japanese occupation begins. After upheavals and tragedies, the story moves into the postwar period, when the Gah Men (as the people who run the country are known) begin a massive earth-moving project to reshape the coastline. Here Ah Boon's unique relationship to the landscape will again play a critical role even as he dons the white shirt and white pants and round, wire-rimmed glasses of a Gah Man. Heng's development of this character is absolutely brilliant and deserves wide notice.
Like a drop of rain that holds the reflection of the world, crystalline and beautiful.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780593420119
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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