Items related to Ursula, Under
In Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a dangerous rescue effort draws the ears and eyes of the entire country. A two-year-old girl has fallen down a mine shaft and it is as if all hope for life on the planet is bound up in her rescue. Little Ursula Wong is the first and only child of a young woman of Finnish extraction and her Chinese-American husband. The Wongs live in a decrepit mobile home and their child is designated by one member of the TV audience as 'half-breed trailer trash', not worth all the attention and expense. Oh yeah? responds the story's narrative voice. Let's just see. And here the novel explodes into a grand saga of culture, history and heredity. By its end, we've met, among others of Ursula Wong's ancestors, a second-century-B.C. Chinese alchemist; an orphaned consort to a sixteenth-century Swedish queen; Professor Alabaster Wong, a Chautauqua troupe lecturer on exotic Chinese topics travelling the Midwest at the end of the nineteenth century; and Ursula's great-great-grandfather, Jake Maki, a mine worker who died in a cave-in at age twenty-nine. Ursula's ultimate fate echoes those of her ancestors, many of whom so narrowly escaped not being born that any given individual's life comes to seem a miracle. Ambitious and accomplished, "Ursula, Under" is, most of all, wonderfully entertaining.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
'An enthralling, well-written novel... Hill offers an interesting concept and a promising debut' -- The Big Issue, 18th January 2005
'An epic formula that, thanks to the author's no-frills execution, works remarkably well' -- Independent, 14th January 2005
'Hill's novel is not unsubtle, and its cannily intertwined narrative revalidates the great melting-pot ideal' -- Observer, 23rd January 2005
'The interaction between Ursula and her parents is quirky and charming' -- Time Out, 25th January 2005
'This bold novel - a tale of heredity and culture - is an enlightening, gripping read' -- Eve magazine, January 2005
From the Publisher:
'An epic formula that, thanks to the author's no-frills execution, works remarkably well' -- Independent, 14th January 2005
'Hill's novel is not unsubtle, and its cannily intertwined narrative revalidates the great melting-pot ideal' -- Observer, 23rd January 2005
'The interaction between Ursula and her parents is quirky and charming' -- Time Out, 25th January 2005
'This bold novel - a tale of heredity and culture - is an enlightening, gripping read' -- Eve magazine, January 2005
A first novel of astonishing ambition, beauty and brilliance
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherDemco Media
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 0606334688
- ISBN 13 9780606334686
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages476
- Rating
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