Romantic lyricism and hard-edged realism merge in this compelling novel.
Major political, military, and economic events in 20th-century China affect the lives and romance of two Shanghainese over many decades.
By moving around in time and place—including Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the U.S. from 1938 to 2008—Chen illuminates the parallels and relationships among key moments in China’s recent history. Intertwining the macro and micro, she makes readers care deeply about the impact of history on her characters’ very private lives. Even the characters’ names change to denote their code-switching based on geography and situation. Star-crossed lovers Suchi and Haiwen meet as first graders in pre-WWII Japanese-occupied Shanghai. A family crisis caused by Shanghai’s shifting politics forces Haiwen to enlist in the Nationalist Army in 1947, before he can propose to Suchi. After Mao’s defeat of Chiang Kai-shek, Suchi lands in Hong Kong, and Haiwen in Taiwan; they meet briefly in the 1960s and do not communicate again until they cross paths in 2008 Los Angeles. Though they follow different paths and marry other people, they remain emotionally “tethered to each other,” as predicted in 1945 by a fortune teller who also described the concept of “mingyun”—a person’s “personal destiny” as determined by a combination of their intrinsic nature and chosen actions—which is so important to the story. Chen avoids romanticizing or demonizing any of her characters. Nuances of class and ethnicity, as well as political identity, come to life as she digs into crevices of ambivalence and muddled motivation. Suchi marries out of financial desperation. Haiwen abandons his passion for the violin to fight for a cause he knows is lost. Suchi’s father, a bookstore owner with progressive ideals, finds himself disillusioned once the Communists he backs take over. Haiwen’s cosmopolitan, Anglophile parents are vilified by both Nationalists and Communists. This is historical fiction at its most effective.
Romantic lyricism and hard-edged realism merge in this compelling novel.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780593712993
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.
Two brothers—one a lawyer, one a chess prodigy—work through the death of their father, their complicated romantic lives, and their even more tangled relationship with each other.
Ten years separate the Koubek brothers. In his early 30s, Peter has turned his past as a university debating champ into a career as a progressive lawyer in Dublin. Ivan is just out of college, struggling to make ends meet through freelance data analysis and reckoning with his recent free fall in the world chess rankings. When their father dies of cancer, the cracks in the brothers’ relationship widen. “Complete oddball” Ivan falls in love with an older woman, an arts center employee, which freaks Peter out. Peter juggles two women at once: free-spirited college student Naomi and his ex-girlfriend Sylvia, whose life has changed drastically since a car accident left her in chronic pain. Emotional chaos abounds. Rooney has struck a satisfying blend of the things she’s best at—sensitively rendered characters, intimacies, consideration of social and philosophical issues—with newer moves. Having the book’s protagonists navigating a familial rather than romantic relationship seems a natural next step for Rooney, with her astutely empathic perception, and the sections from Peter’s point of view show Rooney pushing her style into new territory with clipped, fragmented, almost impressionistic sentences. (Peter on Sylvia: “Must wonder what he’s really here for: repentance, maybe. Bless me for I have. Not like that, he wants to tell her. Why then. Terror of solitude.”) The risk: Peter comes across as a slightly blurry character, even to himself—he’s no match for the indelible Ivan—so readers may find these sections less propulsive at best or over-stylized at worst. Overall, though, the pages still fly; the characters remain reach-out-and-touch-them real.
Though not perfect, a clear leap forward for Rooney; her grandmaster status remains intact.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9780374602635
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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