- Mass Market Paperback: 432 pages
- Publisher: Bantam; Reprint edition (Jan 30 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0553572318
- ISBN-13: 978-0553572315
- Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 2.5 x 17.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 222 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #918,323 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
A suspenseful blend of wartime adventures and history, Gabriel's highly atmospheric, labyrinthine saga of international politics and lost families features a hardy heroine confronted by the daughter she's long believed dead. Now 48, self-made millionaire Francine Lawrence is a survivor of WWII. In flashbacks to 1941, she is a young Eurasian mother whose English husband, the manager of a Malay tin mine, disappears when the Japanese attack. Francine and her four-year-old daughter, Ruth, are installed in a hotel in Singapore, but their precarious situation is exacerbated by racial discrimination. Besieged by Europeans who want rooms, the hotel manager evicts Francine and her child. Francine has no choice but to accept rescue by a persistent suitor, Major Clive Napier. They wangle passage on a dilapidated junk, hoping to get to Java, but after a harrowing voyage (a bombing and a typhoon), they come ashore in Borneo. There, the couple are forced to leave Ruth, who is too sick to travel, with friendly natives. Eventually, after they have made their way to freedom, Francine hears that Ruth was bayoneted by invading Japanese soldiers. More than two decades later, Sakura Ueda walks into Francine's posh Manhattan office, claiming to be her long-lost daughter. At this point the scope of the novel expands, and the plot line shifts to the internecine policies of Laos in the early '70s, involving drug lords, the CIA, the U.S. government and the Pathet Lao. The author burdens Sakura with an impenetrably tangled, tragic history: a childhood in the Bornean jungle and in Tokyo with a Japanese war criminal who later commits seppuku, an adolescence of isolation and poverty and an adulthood marked by gang rape, run-ins with Laotian gangsters, heroin dealing, the kidnapping of her baby and tuberculosis. The narrative is most effective when Gabriel (House of Many Rooms) focuses on Francine and on her skeptical, defensive and complicated feelings toward Sakura, whom she believes is an impostor out for her "mother"'s millions. Though the heroic, violent climax is unnecessarily complicated, Francine's and Sakura's revelatory emotional meltdown is poignant. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
In this novel, Gabriel (House of Many Rooms) tries unsuccessfully to infuse some imagination into an age-old plot. During the bombing of Singapore by the Japanese, Francine Lawrence, a young Eurasian mother, must leave her daughter behind in order to save both herself and the child. Thirty years later, she encounters a woman claiming to be that long-lost child. The novel spends the next 300 pages in a back-and-forth, yes-she-is, no-she-isn't volley of truths and half-truths. Despite some exotic locales, the daughter, Ruth, a.k.a. Sakura, seems strangely flat and lifeless. There's little real suspense, and it's hard to feel much sympathy for either Francine or her self-proclaimed daughter; each has had her share of romantic entanglements, but these relations seem uninspired and dreary. The novel manages to pull off a somewhat climactic last few pages, but it comes too late. A marginal purchase for larger fiction collections only.AMargaret Ann Hanes, Sterling Heights P.L., MI
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well written and engrossing,
By Tracy Rowan "dargelos" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Seventh Moon (Mass Market Paperback)
Not entirely a romance, not wholly a thriller or a mystery, THE SEVENTH MOON is a gripping mixture of all three that takes us from Singapore on the eve of the Japanese invasion to New York, Hong Kong and Laos in the early 70s in a tale about a woman's attempts to deal with the fate of her only child.Early in World War II, as the Japanese overrun Malaysia, Francine Lawrence flees Singapore with her lover and her young daughter, Ruth. But Ruth is too sick to finish the dangerous journey, and Francine is forced to leave her with strangers for her own sake. After the war, Francine returns to find the child, but Ruth has vanished and the tribe she was with has been slaughtered by the Japanese. Thirty years later, the appearance of a young woman who may or may not be Ruth reopens all the old wounds. Sakura Ueda has secrets so dark and horrifying Francine can barely imagine them, and every reason to lie about who she is. Yet in the wasteland that has become Francine's heart, something is touched by the presence of Sakura, and Francine finds herself compelled to make one last, fearful journey in the hope of finding the truth and reclaiming her family. THE SEVENTH MOON is a wonderfully well-crafted book, the sort that makes the actual physical act of reading a pleasure. It caught me almost from the first, and carried me straight through 300-odd pages without a hitch or a slow-down anywhere. The theme is universal: the love of a mother for her child, played out not once but twice, and framed by a pair of love affairs born out of need, and a hunger for some human warmth in a cold world. Gabriel, skillfully balancing these parallel histories, keeps his narrative tight, tense and involving straight through to the end. I never quite knew where he was going to go with this story, a quality which always makes me want to shout "halleluiah!" since so many genres have become numbingly predictable. If occasionally I found certain characters a little over-done, or perhaps a bit redundant in some situations, the problems were minor by comparison to the richness these characters brought to the narrative as a whole. Compelling in their weakness as well as their strength, they are entirely human and it's easy to identify with them. Their histories inform their characters, and exotic as they are, those histories feel genuine. There are few false steps here, and the ones I found seem unimportant by comparison to the vividness of the narrative. Gabriel has the gift of telling a story of love and loss without resorting to pathos, the ability to describe terror without resorting to gore, and the knack for eroticism without vulgarity. THE SEVENTH MOON is a hard-to-put-down novel I would recommend to almost anyone who is looking for something more than just a little mind-candy.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome!,
By Kate "Kate" (Monroeville, PA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Seventh Moon (Hardcover)
This is the first novel I have read by this author, believe me, I will be purchasing his other books. I could NOT put this book down and that is no exaggeration. This book grabbed me from the very first page and did not let go. He made me see the wars in a much more personal way. I felt as if I was there with Francine through the whole book. So many other books I read are good, so I give them 4 stars, but this book so outclasses other "good" books it's ridiculous. Highly, highly recommended. Enjoy!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Incredible Book!,
By Pamela B. Mullins (Lexington, KY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Seventh Moon (Hardcover)
I didn't think Mr. Gabriel's MASK OF TIME could ever be topped, not even by him. SEVENTH MOON grabs hold of you from the very first page and is nearly impossible to put down. After reading the last page I immediately turned back to the first page and read it AGAIN, honest truth! Marius Gabriel is a master storyteller and brilliant writer. If you are looking over these reviews, trying to make a decision on whether to buy it... Just do it, this book is unforgettable!
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