A powerful exploration of war’s effects on those who survive it, and specifically of the devastating ambiguities of “survivor’s guilt”—in a first novel by a journalist heretofore known for his 1997 Harper’s article “Prisoner of War” and other reports from such fronts as Bosnia and Chechnya. The story begins in Kurdistan under Iraqui attack, where “war photographer” Mark Walsh, wounded by artillery fire, has survived, though separated from his colleague and close friend Colin, and traumatized more than he knows. Neither the fatalistic acceptance of the Kurdish doctor who treats him nor his return home to New York and his lover Elena forestalls Mark’s increasingly debilitating disorientation and physical lassitude. Then, to Spanish-born Elena’s dismay, her grandfather Joaquin Morales learns of Mark’s condition, and arrives from Spain prepared to “purify” him—as, we learn in carefully spaced narrative disclosures, Joaquin had done during the Spanish Civil War. He had run an “institute” then dedicated to rehabilitating members of Generalissimo Franco’s notorious “blood squads”—and Elena has never forgiven “the Fascist Father Confessor.— As this harrowing tale moves toward an overpowering conclusion, Mark and Joaquin together—and Elena observing and loving them both—painstakingly accomplish conscience’s intricate balancing act: accepting responsibility for one’s mistakes while simultaneously forgiving oneself for living, and for being unable to save those who died. Triage is superbly conceived and plotted, and written in an understated prose that wrings great resonance from delicately placed simple sentences (as Mark laboriously makes love, “His back arched and Elena imagined blood spraying inside him”; as they lie in bed, “Elena heard the soft brush of his eyelashes against the pillow, knew he was still looking out at the night—). A magnificent homage to the method, subject, and spirit of another Scribner author, Ernest Hemingway, that reads, and feels like, a contemporary A Farewell to Arms; it really does.
Pub Date: Oct. 8, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-84695-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1998
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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