Books & Reviews Archive

We are in Boston in 1919, at the close of the First World War. The novel's protagonists are Danny, a police officer from a traditional white family whose patriarch is a high-ranking official in the police department, and Luther, a Black man who could have been a formidable baseball player, but, because he is Black, must resign himself to menial jobs. This is, therefore, a deeply stratified American society, one in which the relations between social classes and different ethnic groups are clearly demarcated. Both protagonists feel ill at ease within this rigid social framework. Danny lives in the Italian neighborhood and is drawn to the social and ideological upheavals that characterize the years immediately following the end of the Second World War. At first, it is mere curiosity, but he soon finds himself increasingly involved. He is sent to infiltrate anarchist and Bolshevik groups as an informant, only to discover that they are simply demanding a more just society.. Meanwhile, he attends meetings of police officers demanding fairer wages and less grueling working conditions. He soon becomes their leader. Luther, in turn, is forced to flee his hometown—leaving behind a wife and child—after killing some criminals. He arrives in Boston and finds work with Danny’s father’s family: he is blackmailed by a corrupt cop who attempts to implicate him in fabricating evidence to frame the Black community for subversive activities. As this brief synopsis shows, the plot is remarkably intricate and packed with twists and turns, in the vein of the best American thrillers. It culminates dramatically with the Boston Police Strike of 1919, which leaves the city at the mercy of criminals, petty thugs, and subversives for two days. Danny emerges defeated: as the leader of the striking officers, he is accused of inciting his colleagues to abandon their posts (in reality, it was political machinations that left the city abandoned). At the beginning of the novel, Danny believes that this world belongs to men like his father (hierarchical, authoritarian, convinced that everyone must know their place), but he comes to realize that this is neither a genuine nor a just world. > - I'll tell you, Luther, it’s been a terrible year-. Luther thought back on his own year and it made him laugh, really laugh.- What-, Danny said, Luther gave him his hand:- you and me together- What do you think you do, Danny replied, when everything you have done in your life turns out to be a damn lie? Build a new life. I guess Luther replied. The most compelling aspect of the book is that a social issue—such as the great Boston Police Strike of 1919 and the birth of the American labor movement—is framed within the conventions of a thriller, making the narrative gripping and fast-paced. Like all American thrillers, it ultimately proves verbose, redundant, and even muddled. Many of its narrative threads get lost in the sheer mountain of pages, and the colloquial, distinctly American style fails to sustain the momentum, being far better suited to delivering plot twists than to exploring character and circumstance in depth. Everything is left far too unresolved. Why read it? The historical context is intriguing for us Europeans, who are unfamiliar with American history.

The book is the saga of a Chinese peasant family who, from a state of abject poverty, becomes exceedingly wealthy following the discovery of a hoard of jewels, all of which are invested in the purchase of land. The protagonist is Wang Lung, an impoverished peasant who marries the maidservant of a great and powerful family. The bride, O-lan, is a plain, taciturn woman, yet tenacious and a tireless worker. She proves to be the peasant's true fortune, as much for her capacity for labor as for her wisdom and common sense. Forced to abandon their land following a severe famine, the couple moves to the city, where they lead a life of bitter hardship. During an uprising, O-lan, drawing on her experience as a servant, uncovers a hidden cache of jewels and gives them to her husband, keeping only two pearls for herself. Thus begins the fortune of Wang Lung, who betrays his wife by taking a new bride and relegating the woman to a subordinate status. O-lan’s illness and subsequent death bring home to her husband her profound importance, leaving him to feel her absence deeply. The book closes somberly with the sons’ decision to sell the land, bringing to an end a family cycle that had made the earth its steadfast anchor. The true subject of the book is the land, and consequently the quintessential peasant yearning to possess as much of it as possible. Another central figure is O-lan, who embodies the traditional role of women, along with their familial and social function. And it is precisely the examination of this character—who never mounts any genuine rebellion against her husband—that exposes the author’s conservative outlook, revealing her inability to offer a realistic, unvarnished reading of the female condition in Chinese society, or to chart a path toward emancipation that could nonetheless have been identified, even if at the cost of some strain on historical reality. Likewise, the other characters, both male and female, operate entirely within established social conventions, with the sole exception of one son who chooses the path of revolution over the quiet life of a landowner. There is no aspiration toward change, and everything is reduced to a complacently sentimental fatalism. The most compelling pages of the book are the opening ones (Wang Lung going to claim his bride-to-be from the powerful household) and the depiction of urban life, with the contrast between city and countryside, the impact of early social revolutions, and the presence of foreigners. Thereafter, the narrative turns maudlin, submerged in an often cloying pietism. While the opening seems driven by an ambition to provide a portrait—however raw and realistic—of rural Chinese life (with faint echoes of Zola’s *Earth*), this subsequently dissolves into an apologetic approach that relegates the Chinese setting to mere backdrop. The pacing of the book remains consistently effective, making for a swift and effortless read; the language is rich at the outset, drawing on the lexicon proper to peasant existence, only to thin out into an increasingly impersonal and detached English. The prose thus accentuates the drift toward a narrative that grows steadily less incisive and alive.