|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
A 'parachute kid' is the child who lives in a family mansion in California while his or her wealthy parents live and work in Hong Kong. It's hard to imagine that such a thing goes on, but Denise Hamilton portrays the lifestyles of these lost and lonely children in a touching way in her debut novel, THE JASMINE TRADE. Generally, an adult is hired to look after them and manage the practical aspects of their lives. They return from school to an empty home and have very little guidance or direction. Then there are the Asian kids who live with parents who expect them to follow the ways of the old culture. Ultimately, they rebel, often running away from home and ending up in deplorable situations. Marina Lu was a parachute kid until she was killed in a suburban shopping mall. She was only 17 years old but drove a Lexus and had a sparkling engagement ring on her hand. LA Times reporter Eve Diamond begins to investigate the alleged carjacking but finds that there's a lot more to the picture than meets the eye. At the same time, she is handling her various other assignments for the paper. For one of them, she has to interview a youth counselor named Mark Furukawa. She finds that he is really attuned to the issues of Asian teenagers in the area and that she is really attuned to him. It's obvious that Hamilton is passionate about the subject matter of her book, but that passion sometimes leads her to lecture the reader about the plight of Asian youngsters in Los Angeles rather than revealing the situation through the narrative events. At times, it felt like Eve was manipulating people to get her story, such as Marina's brother and a sad young woman named May-Li who became even more of a victim than Marina had. The book pulled me along, but the agenda covered was overly broad. We've got rich teens in trouble, poor teens in trouble, gangsterism, prostitution, lost love, found love, murder for hire, blackmail and more. There were too many instances where Eve stumbled across information purely through luck, and there were also an overabundance of 'female in jeopardy' threads. The ending was especially disappointing. I think Hamilton is a very talented writer who was overly ambitious in what she thought she could accomplish with this book. I did enjoy the book, most particularly its depiction of the Asian situation in California, but felt it would have benefited from a tighter focus.
Reviewed by Maddy Van Hertbruggen, June 2004
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
