A little gem.
Delightful comic tale about a man who can’t convince anyone he’s who he says he is.
Recovered from a taxi accident that plunged him into a coma for three days, Martin Harris returns to his wife Liz. Entering the apartment they’re sharing in Paris, Harris encounters a man he has never seen who insists on being Martin Harris. Liz, his mate of ten years, also refuses to recognize the returning Martin, whose protestations become so intense the building super, who also doesn’t recognize Martin, ushers him from the premises. Author van Cauwelaert (the Prix Goncourt winner One-Way, not reviewed) thus starts with a premise that could serve a Hitchcock thriller, a Twilight Zone episode, or a heavy-going exercise in Existentialism. But van Cauwelaert nimbly sidesteps cliché and pretense, coming up with a series of sometimes dazzling scenes on the theme of identity. He speeds the hapless Martin through witty, touching, trenchant encounters with the hospital, the police, the woman driving the cab, and, a high point, a psychiatrist who offers Martin and the reader challenging but never heavy-handed theories about the powers of memory. Growing desperate for the most basic validation, Martin sets a private eye to spying on Martin’s neighbors for a shred of evidence that will prove he’s the real Martin. After checking birth, work, and marriage records, the p.i. tells Martin: “You don’t exist.” Martin’s hope now turns to the cab driver from the accident, Muriel Carderet, who comes to believe Martin is the genuine item. Indeed, as their relationship deepens, Martin wonders whether he might after all prefer being this new Martin. Then Carderet locates one of Martin’s former co-workers, who says he can vouch for Martin’s identity. The co-worker does unlock the puzzle, but not in a way one may expect. The swift final scene—a breathtaking jeté—should surprise even the most jaded fan of thrillers.
A little gem.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2004
ISBN: 1-59051-085-2
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
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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