Word: sylvieã
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...Sylvie??€”haunted by the shocking cruelty of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in the 1930s—may be the most damaged of all. The daughter of murdered missionaries, Sylvie has devoted her life to altruism. Yet for her beneficiaries, Sylvie??€™s presence teeters precipitously between providing mercy and causing pain. Her relentless need to numb herself to the vibrancy of life—to escape into the dulling throes of opium—destroys Hector, June, and her husband, who find it impossible to sever their connection to this fading woman and her elusive love...
...child. Realizing that death draws near, she seeks out Hector to help her track down her estranged son, Nicholas. The difficult journey brings them to Italy, where in a final moment of redemption, Hector and June arrive together at a hallowed church that recalls the ghostly memory of Sylvie??€™s betrayal...
...without dramatizing their failures. Hector is a self-loathing, libidinous man graced with good looks and good luck; June, a disimpassioned, selfish woman whose adolescent urge to cause trouble transforms into a flinty resolve. They self-medicate with alcohol and analgesics, their compulsion not dissimilar to the reason for Sylvie??€™s own addiction. Like the ill-fated Erysicthon, they devour themselves, and yet for all their indulgence in masochistic punishment, they cannot wrench free from the consequences of their war-torn pasts. The author of three previous novels centered on the immigrant experience, Lee is still preoccupied with...
...realism tinged with bouts of fantasy, a world where grime and dirt hug the guts and souls of individuals who would otherwise appear beautifully intact. Hector’s bruises heal within the span of a day, but the wounds beneath lie rank, sore to the touch of Sylvie??€™s ghost, who—preserved in his nightmares—veils her own ruin: “Sylvie Tanner, looming naked before him, perfectly alive and beautiful, her skin aglow with a pure unrivaled shimmer…would tuck her fingers beneath her fine skin and then, with...
...committed next, but his treatment of violence is more invested in details than gratuity, so when they occur—abruptly, though not necessarily unpredictably—they serve to emphasize the remote helplessness of the victim. In Manchuria, the Japanese cut off the eyelids of one of Sylvie??€™s companions in order to force him watch her be raped. Years later, in Korea, Hector is commanded to kill a tortured prisoner of war, but cannot bring himself to pull the trigger. The young bugler, legs broken beneath him, grabs a grenade from Hector’s belt...
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