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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 9, 2004)
Winter Reading 2004-2005 instead of in the guest room?” to “Of course the [Mao] badges were beautiful, everyone thought that. Even I thought that until the Red Guards killed my father.” Mama Wong sums it up: “Sometimes I think how many people are bored, and how we are not bored. We are going somewhere; we are going, going. I made up my mind about it already, and I know. We are going up. You can be rich in money, and of course, this is good. But you can be rich in story, and this is good too.” The intersection of these marvelous lives, The Love Wife is comic, tragic and filled with wisdom. — Josephine Bridges paign for the future of the magic each man feels he’s returned to the land. Clarke’s enchanting story draws on a deep knowledge of literary tradition and European history, placing her in the compa- ny of the best fantasists writing today. Her England is rife with tales waiting for the telling. We can only hope she will return there, soon, and fetch them back for us. — Molly Templeton Rich in Story The Love Wife, a novel by Gish Jen. Knopf, 2004. Hardcover, $24.95. I n form and content, The Love Wife is a staggering achievement and a great read. Blondie, the only non-Asian among five nar- rators, sets Gish Jen’s third novel in motion: “The day Lan came, you could still say whose family this was – Carnegie’s and mine.” Carnegie Wong, Blondie’s husband, pro- vides another point of view. He describes his mother, who swam across the shark-filled harbor from Mainland China to Hong Kong using two basketballs as flotation aids. “The week before our wedding, she bought a Mercedes,” Carnegie notes. “She steeled her- self for the event by reading over the owner’s manual.” Lizzy, a third narrator, is the elder of Blondie and Carnegie’s adopted daughters. Asian of indeterminate origin – “soup du jour” in Lizzy’s words – and born in Inscrutable Observer America, the teenager struggles mightily with her ethnic and cultural identity. Wendy is the younger daughter, born in China and acquired with great difficulty. On the way to the airport to pick up a woman who will irrevocably alter her family, Wendy observes: “The windshield wipers keep on wiping and wiping as if that’s their home- work and they just have to do it.” Lan, the fifth narrator, is a Chinese rela- tive who supposedly comes to America — a condition of Carnegie’s mother’s will — to work as nanny to Lizzy, Wendy and their “bio” baby brother, Bailey. Lan’s emotional range extends from “For did not Blondie decide I should live in the barn with the goat The Master, a novel by Colm Toibin. Scribner, 2004. Hardcover, $24.99. Short list, 2004 Booker Prize. 2004 New York Times Notable Book. ike a shoehorn, Colm Toibin’s eloquent novel slips inside the soul of Henry James, a 19th century literary force. True to James’s voice, Toibin is a guide through the inner life of this androgynous virgin, the epitome of decorum, a man who “retreated into the locked room of him- self.” L Poised in doorways, observing the enig- ma of relationships, penning psychological novels in minute detail, James sequestered himself from intimate life. Thinly veiled ref- erences of latent homosexuality include the poignancy of Henry in the rain, all night gaz- ing at the lighted window of a man. The American James (1843-1916) grew up in a well-to-do, intellectual, eccentric family immersed in Emerson, Trollope and Balzac. Because of a geographically restless father, James was educated abroad. His mother, in unspoken collusion, cosseted and protected him from the intrusions of daily life. He spent days in his tower of thought, reading and writing. This habit cultivated a lifetime passion for solitude. James’s four siblings included William James, the famous psychologist with a pen- chant for psychics. Henry’s literary influ- ences included invitation-only audiences with George Sands and a London-playwright phase with Oscar Wilde. The Master strolls between key events in Henry’s life that permeate his novels. He lived abroad, writing about the upper crust writers and artists he mingled with in Florence, Paris and London. The powerful theme of the unspoken dominates his fiction. James loved and abandoned two women at critical junctures. After her death, his spir- ited cousin Minny inspired Daisy Miller and Portrait of a Lady. She was his hidden self, “the part he guarded most fiercely.” Novelist Constance Woolson was his closest friend, yet he turned his back on her, “retreating into the locked room” before she committed sui- cide. James grieved, but their deaths made him feel safe. His astute analysis about other people did not extend to self-scrutiny. James lived in “the shadowed corners, and all the other rooms from whose windows 'LEQTEKRI4S[HIVSRE&IIV&YHKIX 8[SHE]PMJXXMGOIXWTIVHE] VSSQWJVSQTIVRMKLX QXFEGLIPSVGSQGSPPIKI 3KRWR.LUN'H9ROO6NLHU0DUN(OOLQJ ;IORS[GSPPIKIWXYHIRXWEVI FVSOI8LEX«W[L][IGEQIYT[MXL XLISJHE]PMJXXMGOIXERH MJ]SYRIIHPSHKMRKGLIGOSYXXLI HIPY\IKYIWXVSSQWEXXLI -RRSJXLI7IZIRXL1SYRXEMR8EOI EFVIEOERHIRNS]E[IIOIRHSJ LMKLHIWIVXTS[HIVERHXLI FMKKIWXQSYRXEMRMRXLI 2SVXL[IWXEX1X&EGLIPSV 1YWXWLS[GYVVIRXWXYHIRX-(ERHHVMZIVWPMGIRWISVTLSXS-(EKISRP]8MGOIXQYWXFITYVGLEWIHSR*VMHE]2SXZEPMHERH3JJIVI\TMVIW VSSQWPMQMXIHXSX[STISTPI DECEMBER 9, 2004 13
