Those who demand comprehension will be exasperated, but others willing to suspend disbelief might be enchanted.
A debut novel of oversized ambitions written by a former school headmaster.
Edwards plainly dreams no small dreams. He explains in the acknowledgments that this novel has taken him some 30 years to write, though it seems to have its genesis even earlier, in the anything-goes ’60s. Or at least that is the setting in which protagonist Wheeler Burden establishes himself as something extraordinary: first as a college baseball pitcher, then as a rock star—veteran of Woodstock, survivor of Altamont, buddy of Buddy Holly, composer of the most famous feel-good anthem of his generation. Yet Burden has walked away (literally) from both the diamond and the bandstand to write a book based on the notebook of his beloved prep-school teacher, followed by a tour that results in Burden’s assassination (shades of John Lennon). Somehow (don’t ask) death transports Burden to turn-of-the-century Vienna, where most of this novel transpires. Here he encounters his war-hero father, the late Dilly Burden, who attended the same prep school and had the same beloved teacher as Wheeler. Not so coincidentally, that teacher is coming of age in that same 19th-century city. They also meet the notorious anti-Semite who will become Dilly’s father and the irresistible woman who will marry him (and with whom Wheeler engages in what is perhaps an incestuous relationship). Wheeler’s tale provides fodder for the theories of his analyst, Sigmund Freud, as the plot additionally features cameos by Mark Twain, Gustav Mahler and a very young Adolf Hitler. The burden for the Burdens is to discover whether they have any choice but to let history play itself out as they know it will, a combination of diary and prophecy that Wheeler records in the “little book” of the title. That book provides the source material from which his Jewish, pacifist mother crafts this narrative, following instructions that “all of our lives weave together in a fatal and continuous and repeating loop, one not easy to comprehend.”
Those who demand comprehension will be exasperated, but others willing to suspend disbelief might be enchanted.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-525-95061-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
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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