Young China hand Salzman made a big splash (at age 22) with his account of teaching in China, Iron and Silk (1986); now comes his first novel, a picaresque set in China, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. They're Chinese all right, but Salzman's two leads are still an all-too-familiar combination: a guileless young man and a much older henchman with extraordinary powers. The latter is Colonel Sun, a many-centuries-old Rip Van Winkle, and as resourceful as the mythical Monkey King; he can disarm an opponent with his power-stare. In 1960, he saves little Hsun-ching from certain death and delivers him to the scholarly Buddhist monk Wei-ching. The monk's hope while raising him is that one day Hsun-ching will travel to America to retrieve the Laughing Sutra, the only major scripture missing from his collection, but fast the boy must endure ten years hard labor in a commune (all part of Mao's Cultural Revolution). By 1976, the 20-year-old Hsun-ching is ready to set off, with the Colonel as his companion. Sun gets them across the border into Hong Kong, though (more old-hat material) he is nonplussed by such things as guns, TV sets, and elevators, and then wangles them free passage to San Francisco. Their American experience is a mix of cross-cultural comedy, as they struggle to make sense of hippies and gays, fast food and soup kitchens, and old-fashioned adventure (breaking into the Dharma Institute to steal the sutra), with just a smidgen of romance (Hsun-ching falls for the curator's assistant). The wrap-up has the monk, now on his deathbed, receiving the sutra from Hsun-ching, while the Colonel prepares to hibernate again. What starts out as a spiritual fable soon yields to run-of-the-mill picaresque: when the quest for the sutra fails to develop momentum, Salzman dusts off some befuddled-foreigner routines. Disappointing.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1990
ISBN: 0679735461
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1990
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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