An eccentric satire that stands in contrast to Mishima’s more formal works and that makes for quick and entertaining reading.
Offbeat, sardonic yarn about self-commodification and its discontents.
Mishima is best known for brooding, elegant novels such as The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea (1963) and the stories collected in books like Death in Midsummer (1953) as well as his spectacular suicide by seppuku after leading a failed coup attempt in 1970. This slender novel, published two years before his death, sounds his disdain for the capitalism that had replaced traditional Japanese values. Hanio, a young man, awakens in a white room where a nurse and paramedic await him. “It dawned on Hanio that his attempt at suicide had failed,” writes Mishima, matter-of-factly. Since clearly Hanio can’t pull it off by himself, he takes out an ad reading, “Life for Sale. Use me as you wish.” The first response is from an old man who tells him his young wife is sleeping with a gangster, and Hanio dutifully marches off to seduce her with an eye to getting himself and the young woman gunned down by her affronted lover. It doesn’t quite work out. Nor does Hanio succumb to the ministrations of a comely young widow whose son hires him to be her boyfriend. There’s just one hitch: She’s a “very unusual sort of person,” as the kid says, in fact a vampire. And so on. Things are never as simple as they seem, and all of his contacts are connected in a strange conspiracy that hinges on the Asia Confidential Service, a spy network that may or may not exist. The one person who seems to get it is a disaffected young woman who’s fond of LSD and literature and who tells him, “I know what your problem is. You’re tired of trying to die.” She’s right, but now that others are out to do him in, Hanio no longer has to go to the trouble of finding a way to do it—a nice if bleak twist.
An eccentric satire that stands in contrast to Mishima’s more formal works and that makes for quick and entertaining reading.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-56514-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Vintage
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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