In this week's review roundup, we pay special attention to the books overlooked this month. Though not as popular as their spotlit counterparts, the two books below deserve as much praise for their daring subject matter and compelling narratives as any major bestseller. It's time to step off Broadway and revel in the under-appreciated. 

"The Little Red Guard" by Wenguang Huang

Constructing a story with a narrative revolving around a wooden coffin isn't necessarily an auspicious start to a crowd-pleasing memoir. Then again, the way "The Little Red Guard" has been received in the literary world suggests we should recheck our "once upon a time" assumptions. A coffin may sound like a morbid start, but it was - after all - built for a living person. At her request, Wenguang Huang's grandmother implored her son, a lowly member of the Communist Party in China, to build her a coffin. Why? Well, Maoist China decreed the darnedest things: Celebrating one's death with a proper burial was considered superstitious, and it was subsequently banned in favor of cremation. Ironically, then, the coffin that kicks off "The Little Red Guard" is a symbol of simmering life in an otherwise restrictive society.

Marjorie Kehe of The Christian Science Monitor notes how "Wenguang Huang's memoir about his childhood in Mao's China tells a universal story of the bonds of love – and the pangs of regret – which can shape a family." In agreement is Jimmy So of The Daily Beast, who writes: "The story of how Huang’s family honored this pledge is a perfect, moving symbol of the struggles of living through that period, and witnessing the passage of time." "If you are looking for a book that brings a corner of modern China alive," writes Michael Fathers of The Wall Street Journal, "—a book filled with humor, family squabbles and ordinary life in a large city in a one-party state—look no further than 'The Little Red Guard.'"
Bio-Metric: 4.5/5

"Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" by Blaine Harden

It's easy to overlook the things we don't wish to see. It's even easier to overlook the things we aren't supposed to see. America in the 1950s is a perfect example of blissful (and willful) ignorance. But some things, like the harrowing tale of Shin Dong-hyuk's escape from a North Korean prison camp, aren't meant to be ignored. North Korea has hidden its actions and sheltered its citizens from the public eye ever since the end of the Korean War. Since then, a piling list of inhumanities - powered by a corrupting propaganda machine - has been left to fester in the shadows of the Hermit Kingdom.

"Escape from Camp 14" by Blaine Harden is equal parts discomfiting and terrifying. It reminds us in the West just how easy we have it by simultaneously confronting us with the horrors of a backwards society. Naturally, our instinct is to change the channel. All the more reason why we shouldn't. "This is not a familiar prison camp story; as Mr. Harden points out, Shin Dong-hyuk is not Elie Wiesel. 'God did not disappear or die,' Mr. Harden writes. 'Shin had never heard of him,'" writes Janet Maslin of The New York Times. In this "searing account" and "remarkable story," Melanie Kirkpatrick of The Wall Street Journal notes how "parts of 'Escape From Camp 14' can be painful to read. Mr. Harden spares no detail of Mr. Shin's torment, physical or psychological. He writes in a direct, matter-of-fact style that puts the horrors he is relating in dark relief." Also applauding Harden's harsh revelations is Andrew Salmon of The Washington Post: "While the horrors of the Russian gulag, Nazi genocide and Cambodian mass murders have been amply documented, North Korea’s grisly conditions remain shadowy and under-publicized. In depicting the depravity of North Korean prison life, Harden’s book is an important portrait of man’s inhumanity to man."
Bio-Metric: 4.5/5