The Queen of Tears
Chris McKinney, . . Soho, $23 (314pp) ISBN 978-1-56947-420-4
Front-loaded with deft character portraits, this multigenerational family saga, picked up from Hawaii's Mutual Publishing, fails to fulfill its considerable potential. An expatriate Korean former movie star, Soong Nan Lee has traveled to Honolulu in an attempt to solve her American children's highly American problems: elder daughter Wong Ju is keeping her loveless marriage together for the sake of her spoiled, alienated teenage son; middle child Donny is marrying a stripper named Crystal; and younger daughter Darian is dropping out of Berkeley and shacking up with Crystal's drug-dealer brother. The family's fights and reconciliations are told from alternating points of view and are intercut throughout with Soong Nan's flashbacks to her violent, glamorous past in 1950s Seoul. In describing Soong Nan's geisha-like training for stardom, McKinney (
Reviewed on: 01/23/2006
Genre: Fiction
Hardcover - 268 pages - 978-1-56647-515-0
Hardcover - 268 pages - 978-1-56647-516-7
Open Ebook - 314 pages - 978-1-56947-793-9
Paperback - 314 pages - 978-1-56947-451-8