Customer Reviews

The New Year: A Novel,

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This story is an intriguing story of a man who cheats on his wife and has an illegitimate child. His wife journeys to Asia to see his son. This story is as beautiful as a pearl(no pun intended) It describes the beauty of Asia and America. I would rather cuddle up with this book than eat cheesecake any day.

This is Ms. Buck at her best. This is the story of a man's struggle to deal with his illegitimate son,a son he never knew existed, and this son's struggle to not only deal with his new family, but a whole new world. This story touches the reader in the very best way.

While a 24 year old soldier in Korea, Chris Winters, an educated and newly married man, moved in with a beautiful Korean girl and fathered a child.When his tour of duty finished, he simply returned home and didn't bother to think about his child, offering no form of support to mother or baby. Now that he's a successful budding politician running for the post of Governor, he's stunned when a letter arrives from his son, begging for help. His wife Laura flies to Korea and forms an attachment to the child, bringing him back to the US for a good education. During Chris's political campaign, he orders Laura not to mention the fact that she's a brilliant industrial chemist, but rather to dwell on the time before their marriage when she was a model as he says" people will feel threatened if they know you're smart!"
Although I am a devoted fan of Pearl Bucks Chinese books, this story made me so angry that I could barely finish it. It's probably a product of its time with its accepted patronising attitudes to women and womens roles in life and in society in general but I found it extremely uncomfortable to remember how we blindly accepted the put-downs and totally patronising attitudes of men.