A taut, chilling novel about the weaponization of language as a tool of oppression.
In Lau’s dark, provocative debut about two Chinese language teachers in an increasingly suppressed Hong Kong, politics becomes personal.
Two months after Wai’s gruesome suicide by an electric drill, her cubicle remains untouched. Even the bizarre mirrors that cover her desk and bookcase stay in place, a sight that the other teachers in the Chinese department at the Sing Din Secondary School avoid. But Ling, who sat closest to Wai, is reminded every afternoon when the sea of mirrors reflects the glare of the sunlight. Her life has changed dramatically since Wai’s death; forced to teach Wai’s classes, Ling finds that her workload has increased to the point that “she didn’t leave school until eight or nine o’clock each night.” Worse, her principal is pressuring her to take the LPAT, a test used to measure Chinese language teachers’ ability to teach in Mandarin. Many schools in Hong Kong are switching from teaching in the native Cantonese to the Mandarin of the Chinese mainland. The principal warns, “Competition is fierce. Ling, you’re smart. You understand what I’m getting at.” The author skillfully toggles the narrative between the present and the past to contrast the two teachers’ approaches to an unavoidable professional challenge. Awkward Wai alienates her colleagues by insisting on speaking Mandarin in staff meetings. Clever Ling’s social savviness, which enabled her to coast at the school for 10 years, is no longer enough to save her from mirroring her colleague’s downward spiral—unless she makes a radical change. The use of mirrors (the word is repeated more than 100 times throughout the novel) is a powerful metaphor, not only for Ling’s lack of self-reflection but also for a society that values surface appearances (designer brands and plastic surgery are popular topics of discussion in the teachers’ office). Translator Feeley’s concluding essay offers insightful context on Hong Kong’s current political situation.
A taut, chilling novel about the weaponization of language as a tool of oppression.Pub Date: June 11, 2024
ISBN: 978-1-55861-318-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.
What begins as a decorous whodunit set in a gated community on the River Thames turns out to be another metafictional romp for mystery writer Anthony Horowitz and his frequent collaborator, ex-DI Daniel Hawthorne.
Everyone in Riverview Close hates Giles Kenworthy, an entitled hedge fund manager who bought Riverview Lodge from chess grandmaster Adam Strauss when the failure of Adam’s chess-themed TV show forced him and his wife, Teri, to downsize to The Stables at the opposite end of the development. So the surprise when Kenworthy’s wife, retired air hostess Lynda, returns home from an evening out with her French teacher, Jean-François, to find her husband’s dead body is mainly restricted to the manner of his death: He’s been shot through the throat with an arrow. Suspects include—and seem to be limited to—Richmond GP Dr. Tom Beresford and his wife, jewelry designer Gemma; widowed ex-nuns May Winslow and Phyllis Moore; and retired barrister Andrew Pennington, whose name is one of many nods to Agatha Christie. Detective Superintendent Tariq Khan, feeling outside his element, calls in Hawthorne and his old friend John Dudley as consultants, and eventually the case is marked as solved. Five years later, Horowitz, needing to plot and write a new novel on short notice, asks Hawthorne if he can supply enough information about the case to serve as its basis, launching another prickly collaboration in which Hawthorne conceals as much as he reveals. To say more, as usual with this ultrabrainy series, would spoil the string of surprises the real-life author has planted like so many explosive devices.
Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780063305649
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
