Publisher's Weekly Review
Rizzuto's quasi-thriller turned weighty multigenerational saga follows three women facing debilitating illness, alienation, and extreme isolation against the backdrop of war and a devastating environmental catastrophe. As the novel opens in the early 1970s, 24-year-old half-Japanese, half-white Hana returns to her sparse New York City apartment to find her estranged twin sister, Kei, knocked out cold in the bathtub, apparently the victim of a break-in. Kei falls into a coma and is hospitalized, and as Hana tries to figure out what happened, she visits Kei and tells her stories about their childhood in 1950s and '60s Hawaii, hoping it will help revive her. Of particular import are Hana's recollections of competing for their mother's attention, the time Kei nearly got swept away in a tsunami, and-the book's finale-the terrifying event that drove the sisters apart. While the chapters told from Hana's and Kei's perspectives are mostly gripping, the story line that carries the most heft is a third from the perspective of their mother, Japanese-American Lillie, that takes place before the twins are born and explores anti-Japanese prejudice during World War II, the horrors of Japanese internment camps, and the bombing of Hiroshima (themes also explored in Rizzuto's memoir, Hiroshima in the Morning). Though the book meanders a bit too much, it's bolstered by its convincing historical detail and its satisfying characters. A well-paced page-turner it's ultimately not, but Rizzuto's ruminative portrait of a ravaged family on the precipice of forgiveness leaves a lasting impression. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A mother's traumas haunt her twin daughters, whose own intricate relationship further complicates an intense psychodrama.What begins as a thrillerwho tried to strangle Hana Swanson's identical twin sister, Kei, found unconscious in the shower?morphs rapidly into something far more melancholy and introspective in Rizzuto's (Hiroshima in the Morning, 2010, etc.) second novel. Narrated in multiple voices, it explores the sisters' contrasting identities and responses to their mother Lillie's experience as a Japanese-American during and after World War II. Lillie, an orphan, marries Donald, the son of Japanese immigrants, soon after the U.S. is attacked at Pearl Harbor. Soon, Lillie and her new family are relocated to Manzanar, a harsh internment camp, where she gives birth to a son, Toshi. Then, after Donald refuses to foreswear allegiance to the Japanese emperor, his father manages to get the family passage on a Swedish ship heading for Japan. The family settles in Hiroshima, where history will catch up with them. Lillie is a poisoned survivor of the atomic bomb, while Donald and Toshi disappear. Resettled in Hawaii after the war, Lillie gives birth to Hana and Kei, the good twin and the rebellious one, who sometimes swap identities or merge into a single personality, Koko, or can even seem to contain their lost brother, "two souls battling for the same body." Rizzuto's blurring of the twins' identities is perhaps the most interesting aspect of her relentlessly dark saga of loss, fear, guilt, alienation, and scarring (both physical and psychological). Hana's narration predominates, a broken account of an unhappy childhood leading to a withdrawn adulthood. Crises, revelations, and corrected misunderstandings fill the final chapters, offering some clarity but not much cheer.A long and winding fusion of sorrow and psychological processing. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Hana anticipates a visit from her twin sister, Kei, with a keen sense of foreboding. She has crafted her isolated and insular life in New York far away from the demons that haunted her throughout her youth in their small Hawaiian village. So when she returns to her apartment late on the night of her sister's arrival to find Kei savagely beaten and clinging to life, it sends Hana down the rabbit hole of regret and recrimination wrought by unresolved sibling rivalry and betrayal. Along with the mystery of who attacked Kei and why comes the tale of their mother, set amid the horrors of WWII, when Lillie was held in a Japanese-American internment camp, then immigrated to Japan with her husband and infant son, where she suffered in the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. Rizzuto builds on her nonfiction work, Hiroshima in the Morning (2010), in her intricate second novel about three women whose lives have spun out of control and who give voice to the fact that tragedy can, indeed, be imprinted on one's DNA.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2018 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Dreading her twin sister Keiko's visit from Hawaii, Hanako deliberately delays returning to her Manhattan apartment, but when she does, she finds Kei in the shower, unconscious from a mysterious attack. While Kei lies comatose in the hospital, Hana recalls their inseparable, even interchangeable childhoods until adolescence cleaved them into good Hana and wild-child Kei. Their mother's and stepfather's deaths reunite them-at least in physical distance-but Hana must somehow bring Kei back from the darkness. Interspersed with the sisters' saga is Lillie's tragic story as a Japanese American woman imprisoned in Manzanar during World War II who is deported to Japan before war's end, horrifically losing loved ones in Hiroshima, but ultimately survives to return home to the United States. How the dual narratives are linked won't be surprising, and despite multiple red herrings, readers will probably intuit whodunit sooner rather than later. With such predictability, wading through more than 13 hours of psychological meandering risks devolving into tedium. VERDICT Perhaps Christine Lakin's narration could have been more engaging, her Japanese phrases and -Hawaiian pidgin more consistent, the various characters more succinctly distinguished. That said, Rizzuto's (Hiroshima in the Morning) already uneven text limits opportunities for transformative aural enhancement. ["A haunting examination of identity and family": LJ 3/1/18 starred review of the Grand Central hc.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian -BookDragon, -Washington, DC © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.