Liu's fiction is a romp through modern Beijing that pits migrant workers from the provinces against billionaires and...
Capitalism in contemporary China is the background to a nonstop hunt by migrant workers, a billionaire, and government officials—for a purse.
"He’d lost a pack and found a purse” is the recurring theme of Chinese author Liu’s new novel. Such a simple thing lost but so complex the machinations to get it back. The pack contains an IOU for 60,000 yuan, and Liu Yeujin, a resourceful cook at a major construction project in Beijing, is on the trail of the thief who took it. Incessant plot twists take on a comic, Keystone Kops–like chase with enemies becoming partners and friends turning on each other. The cook, trying to support his university-enrolled son, needs the money for tuition and his future dreams. The IOU is from his ex-wife’s new husband, who cuckolded him and promised to pay in settlement. Enter the real estate tycoon Yan Ge. Yan has video of a government official taking bribes and whoring during his nights in the city. That may be the ticket to building back the fortune he lost through bad investments directed by the official. The USB drive containing the video was copied by Yan’s wife for her own shady purposes and is hidden in her purse, which is stolen from their home by the same thief who stole Liu’s pack. He drops it while fleeing Yan's house, and Liu finds it, not suspecting the treasure he's picked up. Suddenly everyone is looking for the purse, offering increasingly large amounts of money for it, and in the ensuing pandemonium, we find that most everyone in this Chinese version of urban capitalism is a crook; the humble cook the most wily of them all. The author uses this social commentary to craft a dark comedy out of the angst of survival. There are no real friends here, no heroes, just everyone on the hustle.
Liu's fiction is a romp through modern Beijing that pits migrant workers from the provinces against billionaires and officials, making a wry statement about modern China and a thoroughly entertaining book.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-62872-520-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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