Review: Tomb Sweeping (by Alexandra Chang)

My Rating:  3.5 stars

This was an interesting collection of 15 short stories by Alexandra Chang, whose previous novel Days of Distraction I had read several years back and really enjoyed.  With this particular collection, I was drawn to certain stories more than others, which isn't surprising, as that's my usual reaction to short story collections that aren't linked somehow. While I would say that I did enjoy this collection overall in terms of content and writing, I didn't like that all the stories felt incomplete in some way — in some cases, I felt like I was being dropped in the middle of a scene that had already been happening, while in other cases, the ending felt so abrupt that I couldn't helping thinking I was missing some pages perhaps. That feeling of "incompleteness" is one of the things that makes short story collections a hit or miss for me (though at the same time, it's hard for me to not read them if I come across a collection that seems like it would suit my tastes).

For me, one of the things that stood out the most with this collection was the way Chang plays around with form in some of the stories. 

The first story that started off the collection, entitled "Unknown by Unknown"definitely captured my attention with its tense buildup, but then it veered a little bit into the abstract and in the end, I didn't really understand where it was going (though maybe that was just me).  The second story, "Li Fan" was the most interesting as well as the most obviously experimental one — the entire story was told backwards (which I actually didn't realize until I was about a quarter of the way through the story and was wondering why it read so oddly), with the last sentence first and the first sentence last.  This was definitely a unique structure, one that I'd never seen employed before, though to be honest, it didn't quite work for me, since I prefer stories in a more straightforward format (I get too distracted otherwise).  I actually had to go back and re-read this story the "right" way (starting at the end back to the beginning, which did irk me a little).  The story "Me and My Algo" features an algorithm as a main character (that is essentially in conversation with the unnamed first person narrator), while the story "Cat Personalities" consists of two characters talking about each other (and a friend) in relation to each of their cat's personality traits.

Even though I didn't necessarily resonate with some of the stories, I did appreciate overall the familiarity of the themes that we as Asian Americans and immigrants often struggle with — themes such as identity and our relationship with society, generational disparity and differences, reconciling past with present, the role of family and the way the dynamics evolve in an immigrant household, etc.   There also seemed to be quite a few stories relating to technology, which was interesting considering this was a central theme in Chang's previous work as well.

Overall, this was a pretty decent collection and I'm glad I read it, despite not necessarily understanding the message behind each story. I'm interested in seeing what Chang will write next, though I'm definitely hoping that it will be a novel rather than short stories.

Received ARC from Ecco Press via NetGalley.