A fevered, strenuous fictional life of Swiss pioneering feminist Emily Kempin-Spyri—the first woman to earn a Doctorate of Law in Europe—that smolders with feminist mission. In 1888, Emily traveled to New York and led an effort to establish a school of law for women. She died in 1901 in a Basel asylum. Emily was the daughter of a stern pastor, one who was broad- minded only ``when it came to materialism,'' and who was inflexible in enforcing the double standard. The only female family member exhibiting any degree of independence was aunt-by-marriage Johanna, author of Heidi (Hasler offers a formidable portrait), but even Johanna declared that the sole object of female learning was to help one's children. It will be Emily's gentle failure of a husband (pastor, social reformer, would-be journalist) who teaches her Latin and university prerequisites. At 34, then, Emily receives her degree in 1887 from the university at Zurich (the rare institution that allowed women to attend classes). Meanwhile, America beckons, and she finds a thrilling momentum among the wealthy feminists of New York. But despite stunning successes—lectures, fetes, and the triumph of founding a school of law for women—there are also the domestic demands of husband and three children. The marriage frays, Walter returns to Zurich, and soon Emily follows—to find poverty, humiliations, and doors closing rather than opening to her. Finally, she's victim to the unbearable tension that's caused by the desperate struggle to stay afloat in waves of social condemnation, rejection, and inner guilts, shame, and anger. She dies in an asylum (which, in fact, the author finds, has no record of her residence). Hasler has conjured up dream visitations of chimeric hopes and mangled memories in a cold and repressive institution. A highly colored tribute, which flickers back and forth in time, to a gifted woman who lived beyond her strength.
Pub Date: Jan. 17, 1994
ISBN: 0-88064-151-7
Page Count: 214
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1993
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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