Thought-provoking fiction for the Digital Age.
The author of the agreeable but aimless Going Out (2004) finds a sense of direction in this ambitious novel, which quietly but scathingly critiques consumerist society.
Narrator Alice Butler, 29, invents new products for PopCo, a global toy company that sells “the things kids want”—or rather, creates those wants through such sinister marketing tactics as fake websites with fake kids “discovering” various PopCo products. Alice is mildly alienated by this as she heads to the company’s annual brainstorming session at its luxurious “Thought Camp” in Devon. But over the course of her stay, childhood memories come flooding back to reveal how far she’s strayed from the ideals of the grandparents who raised her after her mother died and her father vanished. Both were ace mathematicians and cryptographers: Her grandmother worked at Bletchley Park on cracking the Enigma code; her grandfather deciphered a manuscript that led to buried treasure, but refused to make use of it because the treasure lay in a wildlife preserve. He left the secret to Alice, who at “Thought Camp” finds herself increasingly repulsed by the shallow values of most of her fellow employees, who think that “no dress code, no rules and no set working hours” means they’re free, when in fact they’re as trapped as the workers who actually produce Popco’s stuff in dangerous Third World factories. Thomas passes along a lot of surprisingly interesting information about math and cryptography, plus some highly creepy material on toy marketing, as she connects her heroine with fellow rebels and suggests an alternative to mindlessly feeding the corporate desire machine. The conclusion may not be terribly plausible, but it provides a pleasing happy ending for morose but oddly lovable Alice—and a form of revolt that suits her wised-up, yet not entirely cynical, generation. Thomas has always been a sharp observer and deft creator of character; it’s a pleasure to see those skills employed in the context of a strong plot and stronger point of view.
Thought-provoking fiction for the Digital Age.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2005
ISBN: 0-15-603137-X
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
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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