Review: The Invisible Hour (by Alice Hoffman)

My Rating:  4 stars

I had heard so many great things about Alice Hoffman's works, but didn't get the chance to read anything by her until now.  Hoffman's newest book, The Invisible Hour, is a beautifully written story that covers so much ground theme-wise.  It is about a mother's undying love for her daughter, about the freedom of choice and defying the restrictions that society places on women, about love, heartbreak, self-discovery, found families, and what I loved most of all:  the enduring power of books and the myriad ways they can affect those who read them.  I'm sure many an avid reader will be able to recall an example of when the right book came into their lives at exactly the right time that resulted in a profound change or impact in some way.  In the case of the main protagonist in this story, Mia Jacob, the book is The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne — a book that not only (literally) saves her life, but also goes beyond that in its ability to provide profound clarity and meaning as the book accompanies her through her journey of self-discovery.

Hoffman weaves in time travel and magical realism to great effect here.  The first part of the story is set in an undefined "here and now" in Boston, Massachusetts, where Ivy Jacob, a young girl from a wealthy family, finds herself pregnant and alone after her boyfriend abandons her and her parents threaten to send her away as well as put the baby up for adoption.  Ivy runs away and ends up on a farm in rural Massachusetts, which turns out to be an oppressive cult called the Community, run by a charismatic but dangerous man named Joel Davis.  Ivy marries Joel and gives birth to her daughter, Mia.  The Community has strict rules and people who reside there are often subject to harsh punishments for the slightest infraction — punishments that usually involve public humiliation of some sort, such as having their hair forcefully cut or having a letter branded on their bodies.  When Mia commits the cardinal sin of reading books in secret (books are considered evil and are banned in the Community), she finds herself in an untenable situation where she must take matters into her own hands.  The second part of the story is set in 1837, in Salem, Massachusetts, and focuses on Nathaniel Hawthorne's life in the years prior to him writing the novel that would make home famous.  In part three of the story is where both worlds collide in ways that are interesting and unexpected, yet follow a trajectory that is careful about not altering history.

This was a book that I couldn't help being immersed in the entire time I was reading it, even though stories with time travel and magical realism aren't usually my jam.  I think much of this had to do with Hoffman's exquisite writing and brilliant storytelling, which wove the historical and fantastical elements together in a compelling fashion (though I have to say that I was a bit ambivalent about the ending).  When I finished the book, my first thought was to marvel at how Hoffman pulled this story off in a way that felt both magical and historically believable, while also incorporating timely commentary on societal issues.  Of course, this was also a wonderful tribute to books and reading. 

What a great first experience with Hoffman's works!  This definitely got me interested in reading her other books at some point.

Oh, also, for those who decide to pick this one up, there's a moving, gorgeously written Author's Letter at the beginning of the book that is absolutely not to be missed.  

Received ARC from Atria Books via Edelweiss

Review: The Sorrows of Others (by Ada Zhang)

My Rating:  3.5 stars

Short story collections can be a bit of a hit or miss for me.  One reason is because I need stories to have some type of closure, as I don't like the feeling of being left hanging — for me, a story needs to have a beginning, middle, and ending (which can be good, bad, or indifferent — doesn't really matter to me as long as there's closure).  I also enjoy stories with characters that are well-developed and that I can root for.  Unfortunately, most short story collections are written in a way where we essentially only get a small "slice of life" snippet, with the story oftentimes ending abruptly – the result is that the stories usually feel incomplete and I'm left yearning for more.  In terms of the characters, it's hard for me to be invested enough to root for them when I'm given little to no chance of getting to know them and watching them evolve.

 

With Ada Zhang's debut collection of stories, The Sorrows of Others, this was exactly the type of situation I encountered.  While I loved the themes that the stories explored – the impact of immigration and assimilation, constant struggle with identity and belonging, cultural dissonance between generations, parent/child relationships, complex family dynamics, etc. – I felt that the stories were way too short and therefore the themes weren't covered as amply or deeply as I would've liked (as a point of reference, the entire collection was less than 150 pages, with the longest story being only 22 pages and the shortest story only 6 pages).  Nearly every story felt incomplete to me, which made for a frustrating read, as I kept having to start over with each story trying to get back into the groove of things and get acquainted with the new characters.

Format-aside though, the writing here was excellent — Zhang did a great job weaving the cultural elements into the stories, which I definitely appreciated, especially since, being from the same culture, many of the experiences were familiar to me. Also, with some of the characters, the emotional undercurrents were definitely felt within their respective stories, it's just that there wasn't enough time to develop further due to the brevity of the stories.

Out of the 10 stories in this collection, the ones that resonated most with me were:  The Sorrows of Others, Propriety, Silence, Sister Machinery, Knowing, and Compromise.

Overall, this was a good collection that I absolutely recommend for those who enjoy the short story format.  Though I prefer novels, I appreciated the writing enough in this one that, if Zhang were to put out another short story collection, I would definitely read it.

Received ARC from A Public Space Books via Edelweiss.

Review: The Piano Tuner (by Chiang-Sheng Kuo)

My Rating:  3 stars

I don't remember how this book got onto my radar, as I'm not as familiar with Taiwanese literature as I am with Hong Kong literature, but seeing that this was a short novella, I decided to pick it up last minute as a way to round out my January reads.  

Overall, this was a good story, but a bit confusing and hard to follow.  The structure was a nonlinear one that jumped back and forth in time, which normally wouldn't be too much of a problem, but this one also happened to jump back and forth between first person and third person narrative voice as well (a few times, it jumped to second person too, which completely baffled me) — both of these things combined, along with the lack of distinctive breaks between the narration, plus lyrical prose that bordered on abstract in some places, made this an unnecessarily exhausting and tedious read.  The entire story was narrated by the eponymous piano tuner, but presented in snippets of his thoughts that seemed to run together jumbled between his past and current lives, making it difficult to truly understand what was going on at times with the story.

It also didn't help that the ending was very abrupt — the type of ending that seemed to stop in the middle of a thought —  to the point that I thought perhaps I was missing a few pages of the book (which, thinking about it now, is still possible, as the version I read was an ARC that I downloaded several months back, which, according to my e-reader, ended at the 99% mark and didn't have any other pages after it, not even an acknowledgments page).  

I think this had the potential to be a meaningful, emotionally nuanced story, but the structure and the switching of the voices was too distracting and unfortunately drowned out that part of the story.   Perhaps it would've been better for me to read this one in its original language (Chinese) rather than the translated version, as I honestly can't help but feel that maybe something got lost in translation somewhere.  While I don't regret reading this one, plus there were actually some elements of it that I really liked (such as the parts where the narrator talks about the piano pieces and the interesting backstories of the artists), the experience overall was underwhelming.  If I'm able to find the Chinese version, maybe I'll try that and see if my experience is any different…for now though, this definitely more of a borderline 3 star read for me.

Received ARC from Arcade Books via Edelweiss.

Review: Have You Eaten Yet? (by Cheuk Kwan)

 My Rating:  4 stars

This was a fascinating read that was also very different from the food-themed books I’ve read in the past due to how much ground it covered theme-wise.  While on the surface, this book sounded to me like a travelogue food memoir, I quickly discovered that it was actually so much more than that – the food (especially Chinese cuisine) played a huge role of course, and the author, Cheuk Kwan, also spoke a lot about his personal family history and experiences, however there were also elements related to travel, history, politics, culture, immigration, etc. that made this book stand out.  Cheuk Kwan was born in Hong Kong, but also grew up in Singapore and Japan and at different points in his life, lived in various countries including Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Canada.  As a documentary filmmaker, magazine writer, and activist, Kwan spent most of his career traveling around the world, profiling Chinese restaurants in different countries and documenting the stories as well as experiences of the Chinese diaspora from a global perspective.  Starting off in Canada, where Kwan currently lives, he travels across several continents – from Israel to Madagascar, to the Caribbean, Kenya, Mauritius, Turkey, Norway, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Peru (and so many more) – interviewing a diverse group of restaurant owners, workers, chefs, etc. who were ethnically Chinese, but from different backgrounds.  Many of them had vastly different experiences in terms of how they (or, in many cases, their ancestors and other family members) arrived in the country where they ended up as well as how they got into the restaurant business.   Most fascinating to me though, was learning about the evolution of Chinese cuisine around the world and seeing the different ways in which so many of the Cantonese dishes I was most familiar with were adapted for a variety of reasons (i.e. to fit the tastes of the local population or to accommodate the lack of particular ingredients, etc.).   This was a lot of fun for sure (especially the sections where the author would describe some of the dishes in detail, which made my mouth water) -- but not only that, it also brought back fond memories of my previous visits to Asia and all the wonderful food I got to try. 

As I mentioned before though, this book went beyond just talking about food and restaurants.  On a deeper level, the narrative was also an exploration of immigration, community, assimilation, and ultimately, cultural identity.  This was the aspect that resonated most with me – especially since, like the author, I’m also a “card-carrying member of the Chinese diaspora” and so I was able to relate to many of the experiences that were brought up.  At one point, Cheuk Kwan also explores the question of nationality versus ethnicity – he says that in his travels around the world, “meeting with far-flung members of the Chinese diaspora, one question always came to mind:  Are we defined by our nationality or by our ethnicity?  Nationality is a legal construct that can be easily given – or taken away – while ethnicity always stays with us.  It’s in our blood.”  This intrigued me because, despite struggling with the issue of cultural identity my entire life, it was never something that crossed my mind much, until now.  I appreciate when books make me ponder things that I might not have really thought about before, which this one definitely does.

With all that said, of course, this book wasn’t without flaws – the writing was a bit all over the place at some parts and some sections were in need of further editing (the version I read was missing punctuation at some places and also kept referring to the United States as “the us”, which got a bit annoying after a while), but overall, the content made up for it.  Flaws aside, I still definitely recommend this one (though maybe read the published version instead?), as I found the plethora of insights it provides interesting and invaluable -- even with my familiarity of Chinese history and culture, I still learned a lot, which I absolutely appreciate!

  

Received ARC from Pegasus Books via Edelweiss

Review: Tomorrow in Shanghai (by May-lee Chai)

My Rating:  3.5 stars

While I liked this short story collection overall, the problem I had with it was similar to what I usually experience with short stories — the way the stories begin in the middle of an event and then break off suddenly, created a feeling of "incompleteness"  that honestly made it difficult for me to truly enjoy this collection the way I would a complete story or novel.  When I read a story, I'm pretty big on character development — which, for me, means being able to follow a character (or characters) through their journey and watching them grow and evolve in the process.  Unfortunately, most short story collections naturally lack in this area due to the short amount of time the reader gets to spend with the characters.  Oftentimes, as soon as I start to warm to a character, the story is over - the abruptness of it makes me feel like I've been left hanging and that I'm perhaps missing something. It's a feeling I never enjoy having, which is why short story collections are oftentimes a hit or miss for me (the ones where the same characters "show up" throughout the collection or where there is some sort of connection between all the stories usually work better for me).

With this latest collection from May-lee Chai, one of the things I really liked was the variety of the stories in terms of type and genre — there were ones that explored modern day issues realistically while others veered more into the science fiction and fantasy realm.  Having said that though, this became a detriment when it came to the stories that felt inadequately short, as it felt particularly jarring when I was suddenly being plucked out of one world and dropped into an entirely different one.  This was made all the more frustrating when it would happen each time the story started to get interesting (or, as mentioned earlier, when I was starting to warm to a character and wanted to read more about them).  By the time I got to the end of the collection, I felt dissatisfied and (I hate to say it) also a bit cheated.  

Overall, I felt like this collection had potential, and based on the premise of this being about the global Chinese diaspora, I was actually quite looking forward to reading it.  The content of the stories were good, but the overall feel was too choppy, causing this collection to fall a bit short in the end.  I think if Chai were to take these short stories and expand them to be more complete (like perhaps turn them into novellas?), that would've worked better, at least for me (I would definitely read them if that were the case).

Received ARC from Blair Books via Edelweiss.

Review: Kaleidoscope (by Cecily Wong)

My rating: 4 stars


This is a book I had to sit with for awhile to gather my thoughts before figuring out how to get my feelings across on it.  While it may not seem like it on the surface, there was actually a complexity to the story that, on first read, can be difficult to understand. Indeed, for the first third of the novel or so, I honestly wasn't sure where the author, Cecily Wong, was trying to go with the story. There was a lot of back and forth between time periods and snippets of things that happen in the lives of the Brightons — the interracial family at the center of the story.  Hank and Karen are hardworking entrepreneurs who launch a successful company named Kaleidoscope — a "rags to riches" story that catapults them into the upper echelons of society and allows them to realize their American Dream.  Their eldest daughter Morgan, beautiful and talented, is the head designer for the company and, in essence, is also the "star" of the family, beloved by both her parents as well as her younger sister Riley.  Smart and studious but lacking ambition, Riley knows that her place in the family (and in the elite world they've become a part of) will forever be eclipsed by her sister's "larger than life" personality.  Riley is perfectly content with ceding the spotlight to Morgan and retreating to the "support" role she has always played in the family — though the one thing that both she and Morgan both miss is the closeness that they've always shared since they were girls.  When tragedy strikes and the family's world comes crashing down as a result, the aftermath leaves Riley with more questions than answers — about herself, her sister, and most of all, her parents' ambition that has sustained the family's success over the years.

This is a nuanced story with a narrative that shifted around a lot — switching between time periods, between past and present, between character perspectives, between first and third person voices, even touching on second person voice at one point.  The segments of the story mirrored the various fragments of a kaleidoscope, where the pieces eventually come together to form a dizzying but arresting portrait of an ambitious family caught up in the throes of success and its impact on one daughter's personal journey toward meaning and understanding.   As I mentioned earlier, I found it difficult at first to parse the various fragments of the narrative, but when I figured out the direction that the author was trying to go with the story (around the halfway mark), I couldn't help but be awed by the brilliant use of structure and form. Stories that play with structure don't always work for me, but this one did for some reason, and I definitely appreciated the chance to experience something so interesting and different.

This was also a character-driven story where the portrayals of the four members of the Brighton family as well as the various people in their orbit were extremely important.  While none of the characters were particularly likable (which sometimes can be a dealbreaker for me in terms of positive reading experience), all of them were so realistically drawn that I found myself able to resonate with each one in ways that I didn't expect.  In this regard, I felt the author did a good job relating the struggles and inner conflicts that each of the characters went through, especially as it pertained to their relationships and how they interact with each other.

As this is a story that's very hard to describe without experiencing it for yourself, I don't want to give away too much here.  One thing I will say though is that this book is one of the few I've read in recent years that deftly explores the nuances of love and relationships in all its various manifestations and iterations, altogether in one story — i.e.: love that underlies a close bond between sisters;  love between parents and their children that drives certain behaviors and expectations; romantic love both within marriage and outside of it, and how one isn't necessarily dependent on the other; self-love that drives confidence and ambition but also how the lack of it can warp into pain and heartbreak, etc. 

I definitely recommend reading this one, though note that it won't be an easy read for sure (both in terms of subject matter and overall structure of the story).  Also, trigger warnings abound, with a few scenes where some of the descriptions were particularly graphic.  This is Cecily Wong's second novel and while I intend to go back and read her debut, I also look forward to seeing what might be in store from her in the future.

Received ARC from publisher Dutton via Edelweiss.

Review: Our Last Days in Barcelona (by Chanel Cleeton)

My Rating:  4.5 stars

I've read all of the books in Chanel Cleeton's Cuban series about the Perez family and have enjoyed each one (though some more than others).  Of course, the one that will always be my favorite is the first book from 2018, Next Year in Havana, which introduced us to the Perez siblings and the entire extended family.  Though that first book was essentially from the perspective of the third Perez sister Elisa, it did such a great job laying the story groundwork for this fascinating family that by the end of it, I was hoping we would get additional books for each of the other sisters as well.  That wish was granted in 2019 when Cleeton published her second book in the series, When We Left Cuba, which is from the perspective of fiery and passionate second sister Beatriz (who, remains one of the most beloved characters from the Perez family saga).  After that, as Cleeton indicates in her Author's Note, she took a break from writing about the Perez sisters and instead, came out with 2 novels about the lives of 2 different Perez ancestors — the sisters' aunt Mirta Perez in The Last Train to Key West and their cousin Rosa's grandmother Marina Perez in The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba. With her newest novel (which published this month), Cleeton returns to the Perez sisters, this time giving us eldest sister Isabel's story with Our Last Days in Barcelona. 

Picking up essentially where When We Left Cuba ended, Our Last Days in Barcelona has Isabel heading from Palm Beach, Florida to Barcelona in Spain to locate her sister Beatriz, who is involved in dangerous intelligence work with the government.  Once there though, Isabel finds herself partnering with an unlikely ally, Beatriz's friend Diego, with whom she eventually forms a close bond.  But that's not all — in Beatriz's apartment, Isabel discovers a photograph of herself at barely 2 years old, sitting with her mother Alicia Perez in a Barcelona cafe meeting with a mysterious man — though when Isabel asks her mother about the photo, she vehemently denies ever having been in Barcelona.  While looking for her sister, Isabel also unearths additional fragments of the story behind the photograph, which eventually changes her life in profound ways. In an alternating timeline between present day (1964) and the past (1936), the story of Isabel's mother Alicia as well as her father Emilio's cousin Rosa unfold.  Later, both timelines intertwine as Isabel faces some of the same struggles and family expectations that her mother did 28 years ago — in the end, will Isabel choose the same path her mother does or will she follow her heart instead?  

In this novel, Cleeton does the same wonderful job as she did with her previous 4 novels conveying the historical context related to Cuba, though this time, it's the country's relationship with Spain and the civil war that occurred there that provides the backdrop for Isabel's and Alicia's stories.  One of the reasons I like reading historical fiction is to learn about historical time periods, events, people, places, etc. that I didn't know about, which has certainly been the case with Cleeton's works.  Though the Perez family is fictional, Cleeton has done such a great job developing these richly nuanced characters (especially the Perez women) that I couldn't  help feeling as though I was reading about a real family (as mentioned in my review of the first book in this series, Cleeton herself is Cuban-American and actually wove in some of her own family's history as well as experiences fleeing from Cuba into the Perez family story).  Each time I read one of Cleeton's books featuring a character from the Perez family, I feel like going back and re-reading Next Year in Havana all over again (the only thing holding me back from doing a re-read of any book is my overflowing TBR and a dogged determination to get through every single book on the list), since that's the book that kicked things off and first introduced us to the family.  

Speaking of the characters— up until this point, my favorite Perez sibling was Beatriz and while I still love her dearly (especially her fiery and defiant personality), I've also come around to Isabel too now and consider her a favorite as well.  I also appreciated how we were given additional insight into Alicia as a character and the background of some of the things that happened in her life during her youth that eventually shaped the woman she became later (especially in the context of her role as wife, mother, and Perez family matriarch).  I'm not sure whether Cleeton will write another book about the Perez siblings (my guess is yes, as there is still one more Perez sister's story left to tell — youngest sister Maria's), but having followed this fictional family from the beginning, there's no doubt that I will want to read that book as well (if / whenever it comes into being).  While technically it's not necessary to read the previous 2 books about the Perez sisters in order to read this one, I do recommend doing so only because you get the full background of the family history — which, for me, makes a huge difference in terms of reading experience.  Even if Cleeton's next novel won't be about the Perez sisters specifically, I'm pretty sure she will incorporate another character from the Perez family into it — identifying the connection between the characters in each of her books to the ones in the original story (as well as to her other books) is part of the "fun" of reading her novels, at least for me.

Received ARC from Berkeley Books via Edelweiss.

Review: No Land to Light On (by Yara Zgheib)

 

My Rating: 3 stars

I'm a little torn on this one.  The story, which revolved around a Syrian couple caught up in the travel ban against Muslim countries back in 2017, definitely had a lot of potential.  In fact, the story actually started off strong -- I was immediately sympathetic to Sama and Hadi's situation and was absorbed in how things would play out for them.  However, a few chapters in, the story seemed to unravel a bit in terms of plot and some things started to not make much sense.  Even so, I continued to stick with it, as I felt the characters were well-drawn and their story was an important one to tell.  Indeed, what happened to both of the characters was heartbreaking and in detailing their plight, especially the various injustices that they had to endure, I felt that the author, Yara Zgheib, did a good job making the story emotionally resonant, to the point that I couldn't help but root for the characters, even if there were times when I didn't agree with their actions.

With all that said though, I did have some issues with this one that made the reading experience a little bit of a struggle for me.  The issues were mostly with the structure and the writing, which made parts of the story confusing and hard to follow.  Structure-wise, the story was mostly told through Sama's and Hadi's alternating perspectives, which wasn't unusual, but the mode kept switching too, between first person, second person, and third person points-of-view, sometimes all in the same chapter, which to me, was a bit too much.  In terms of the dialogue, that too was done in a way that was different -- some of the dialogue was in quotes while some of it wasn't and it seemed to be randomly done throughout the story (at least I wasn't able to figure out any particular rhyme or reason to it).  I had actually read Zgheib's debut novel The Girls at 17 Swann Street back in 2019 and while I liked that book quite a bit, I remember mentioning in my review at the time that the structure was odd because some scenes were written in ways that were intertwined to the point that it was hard to tell where one moment ended and the next one began.  Interestingly enough, I saw nearly the exact same structure issue with this book as well, which leads me to think that perhaps this is just the way this author writes? 

As if that weren't enough though, the prose throughout the story was what I would describe as overly "flowery" and metaphorical -- normally I wouldn't have a problem with this, but in this case, it was way overdone and had the effect of making the story too abstract -- to the point that, with some sections, I would finish reading several pages and have no idea what just happened.  I have nothing against flowery language and actually feel that it works well in certain situations, but it can't be at the expense of the story and the plot, which was what happened here, as I felt like I kept having to unravel the metaphorical language and interpret what the author was trying to say -- this distracted from the story and also made the overall reading experience too exhausting for me.

One more thing about the structure that confused me was how there were excerpts from what looked to be a paper about bird migratory patterns (which I'm going to assume was Sama's dissertation, since the backstory scenes indicated that she studied anthropology and wrote a paper on birds) scattered throughout the story.  While I get that the author likely included those snippets as an analogy for the immigrant experience (since the entire premise of the story was about the immigration system in the U.S. after all), I honestly didn't see the relevance from the technical details provided in those sections.  After a few times, I ended up skipping those sections and not even reading them, since they were unnecessary to the understanding of the rest of the story.

Overall, I think this one had the potential to be a powerful story, but the not-so-good execution (with its odd structure and overuse of metaphorical language) made the narrative come across as too fragmented and disjointed.   As I mentioned earlier, there were some parts of the story that I felt were done well and this was definitely a story worth telling in my opinion (which is why I didn't rate this one lower than I probably would have in other circumstances).  I feel like this was one of those instances where an inexperienced author tried to do way too much -- i.e. play with structure and language, employ as many literary devices as possible, etc., while trying to write about a heavy, controversial topic that naturally required incorporating social and political commentary as well.  Instead of having the intended effect, it ended up feeling like the story was all over the place. 

It looks like this one has been a mixed bag so far in terms of reviews, so I would suggest checking out some of the other reviews to get a better feel for whether this is one you would want to pick up, since some of the things that bothered me about the structure might not be an issue for others.

Received ARC from Atria Books via Edelweiss.

Review: Shiner (by Amy Jo Burns)

My Rating: 5 stars

I had actually received an ARC of this book over a year ago and even though, at that time, I had every intention of reading it, life unfortunately got in the way and that was that.  It wasn't until recently, when one of my book clubs chose this for our monthly read, that I remembered about the ARC, so I went and dug it up.  I will admit that the slow pace of the story in the beginning turned me off a bit initially, as did the characters, several of whom I found annoying at first with the way they behaved.  What drew me in though was the beautiful, immersive writing — almost lyrical in its cadence — and as soon as I started to understand what the author, Amy Jo Burns, was trying to do with the story, I became fully engaged in the lives of these characters, several of whom I grew to love by the end of the story.  

Though much of the narrative revolves around Briar Bird, the snake handling preacher who rules the mountaintop with his 'White Eye' legend, the heart and soul of the story are actually the "women who give this mountain its splendor" but who get nothing in return — women like Ruby (Briar's wife), Ivy (Ruby's best friend), and Wren (Briar and Ruby's teenage daughter).  I love the strong female characters in this story, all of whom have no choice but to forge their own path of survival in a land of men whose power often went unchecked and unchallenged.  This is also a story about the complexities of human relationships and how messy and convoluted they can become.

Structure-wise, the narrative is divided into 4 main sections, each told from the perspective of one of the main characters: Wren (the snake handler's daughter), Ivy (the fearless best friend), Flynn (the moonshiner).  Through these segments, we gradually gain insight into the lives of these characters: their triumphs and tragedies, their joys and their heartbreaks, their strengths and their fragilities.  Having said that, I thought it was interesting how central of a role Briar played as the instigator of nearly every negative incident, yet we get to hear from every other character except him — whether this was done deliberately or inadvertently, I don't know, but I feel it was a brilliant move nonetheless, as it gives voice to those who are expected to stay hidden: the wives and daughters living in the mountains of Appalachia, isolated from the outside world, not necessarily by their own choice.

This is the type of book that is difficult to read due to its subject matter, yet at the same time, it's also an absolutely necessary and worthy read.  With its themes of doing the best with the little you have, finding strength in the face of desperation and suffering, survival through sheer determination and grit, the overall tone of the story is melancholic and despondent, yet also hopeful, especially with Wren's coming of age story and her will to survive in spite of the fates her mother and Ivy suffered.

This is a debut that I highly recommend, one that perhaps takes a little patience to read, but definitely worth the effort.  I look forward to reading more from this author.

Received ARC from Riverhead Books via Edelweiss.

Review: Beautiful Country (by Qian Julie Wang)

My Rating:  5 stars

I'm quite picky when it comes to memoirs and tend to gravitate towards those where I am able to either relate to the experiences of the author or connect with them in some way.  While there are a plethora of memoirs out there, the reality is that very few of those memoirs are actually written from the perspective of someone who shares a similar background as myself — namely, a Chinese-American woman from an immigrant family who has struggled with identity and belonging her entire life. This is why, when I found out about Qian Julie Wang's memoir Beautiful Country, I knew I absolutely had to pick this one up. This powerful memoir is exactly one of those rare gems that most closely encapsulates the immigrant experience that I grew up with.  Though there are obvious differences between our circumstances in terms of how are families came to America (the titular "beautiful country" as directly translated from Chinese) — for example, my family immigrated here legally while Wang's family ended up here illegally due to an expired visa — many of the struggles that Wang recounts from her childhood are ones that I've also experienced.  

Wang tells her story starting from the perspective of her seven-year-old self, when she is told to put her most prized possessions into her grandparents' storage unit in China so she could accompany her mother on a "flying machine" (literal translation of 飛機 or "airplane") that eventually lands in a place called "beautiful country" (literal translation of 美國 or "America"). From the moment Wang and her mother step off the plane at JFK airport (New York) and are reunited with her father (who had gone to America two years earlier), her life is forever changed in ways that eventually shape who she becomes in adulthood.  Though she didn't know it at the time, leaving China for America meant that Wang would go from an environment where she was surrounded by extended family, unconditional love, and every comfort possible, to one where loneliness was a constant companion, familial love came with strings attached, and every day was a fight for survival at all levels (physically, mentally, emotionally).  We witness Wang's coming of age through the wide-eyed lens of a child forced to navigate a world she does not understand and where she was taught to put her head down, do as she was told, and endure whatever was thrown her way without complaint because that was the expectation of someone in her situation.  

While in China, Wang's parents were highly educated professionals, in America they were reduced to working in sweatshops and other low-paying jobs that allowed them to remain in the shadows, with the constant fear of their illegal status being discovered hanging over them. The stress of their new life in a foreign country where, despite their efforts to remain invisible, they are still largely unwelcomed, takes a toll on Wang's parents and eventually leads to the fracturing of their family.  Illegal status aside though, Wang's struggles growing up as an immigrant child resonated deeply with me — from the humiliation of a tenuous living situation where there was little to no privacy, to not being able to afford the most basic of comforts that seemed to come easily to everyone else (ie: enough food for the table, a roof over our heads, clean clothes to wear to school); to being constantly told that, no matter how hard you work to fit in or how much you contribute to your community, you will never truly belong; to the bullying and racism, both subtle and direct, that becomes an inevitable part of the immigrant experience.  For me, this book was difficult to read — not because of challenging subject matter or anything like that — but because of the familiarity of Wang's experiences and the memories they brought back of my own childhood.  One experience in particular had me near tears when I read it:  the scene where, in fifth grade, Wang is summoned to her (white male) teacher's desk one day and, shown an essay she had written and submitted, is essentially accused of plagiarism because the essay was "too well written" and the English was "too good" to have been written by her.  Even though she told her teacher that she truly did write the essay and didn't plagiarize, her status meant that she was not to be believed, so after that incident, Wang would deliberately include spelling and grammatical errors in all her essays to avoid having to endure a similar confrontation with her teacher in the future.  This scene resonated with me in particular because this was a common experience for me throughout my entire elementary and middle school education: being told that something I wrote couldn't possibly have been written by me because the English was "too good" and that I must have copied it from elsewhere.  As a result, I also started deliberately including "errors" in my writing to avoid confrontation. Luckily, I later attended a high school and college that embraced diversity and eventually recognized my efforts (though the shaken confidence in how I view my writing is something that I still carry with me to this day).

This was truly a profound and emotional read for me, one that I know will stay with me for a long time to come.  Even though reading this memoir brought back some unhappy memories for me, I appreciate the fact that a book like this one exists. While I am buoyed by the knowledge that our country has come a long way in terms of racial diversity and acceptance, at the same time, I am saddened by the obvious steps backwards that we as a society have also taken in this area, over the past few years especially. Now more than ever, we need books like this one that can hopefully help open people's eyes to the plight that so many in our society experience — a timely read that I absolutely recommend!

Received ARC from Doubleday Books via Edelweiss.

Review: We Two Alone (by Jack Wang)

My Rating: 4 stars

Those familiar with my reading tastes have probably heard me say this way too many times:  I'm not usually a huge fan of short story collections because I don't like the "incomplete" nature of the format, as I always feel like I'm left hanging somehow, plus I oftentimes don't get the chance to connect to the characters the way I would in a full length novel.  Even though it can be a "hit or miss" reading experience for me, I will still pick up a short story collection if the themes or subject matter sound interesting enough to me – especially since, at least recently, I've encountered "hits" more than "misses" in the ones I've decided to try.  Such is the case with Jack Wang's debut short story collectionWe Two Alone, which I finished over the course of a busy weekend.  This well-written collection consists of seven stories, each of which features a Chinese protagonist from different walks of life, but with the common experience of having to navigate the world as immigrants.  

 

Over the years, I've read plenty of stories about the Chinese immigrant experience, but this particular collection stood out in several ways.  First was the setting of each story, which spanned not only continents but also decades -- starting in the 1920s and spanning to the modern day, each story takes place in a different part of the world:  Canada, China, Austria, South Africa, UK, and 2 states in the U.S. (Florida and New York).  Second was the characters, all of whom hailed from different backgrounds (from the poor, uneducated, disenfranchised, to the wealthy and privileged, to the middle class) and professions (doctor, actor, hockey player, student, teacher, etc.).  Not only that, each story was also told from a different life perspective -- ranging from an orphaned teenager struggling with identity and acceptance, to a mixed race couple navigating the complexities of an unconventional relationship, to a middle class family experiencing unexpected hurdles when buying a house, to an innocent child inadvertently witnessing the atrocities of war, to an itinerant actor endlessly trying to figure out his life while yearning to reunite with his ex-wife, etc. 

 

Taken together, this is a collection that truly does highlight the diversity of the Chinese diaspora, yet at the same time, it also infers that there is a certain universality to the immigrant experience in terms of discrimination, bias, and racial prejudice that so many of us can relate to, regardless of whether we are from the same cultural or socio-economic background.   In this regard, I was actually able to resonate with some aspect of every single story, which is a rare occurrence for me with short story collections (and especially with a collection as diverse as this one).  With that said though, this also made the feeling of disappointment greater for me knowing that I was only getting a snippet of each character's story and would be left to ponder their fate on my own.  This is one of the things with short story collections (specifically the ones with no inter-connected characters) that I can't stand – the feeling of being left hanging.  With whatever story I read, I need to have closure – whether good, bad, or ambiguous, doesn't matter as long I don't feel like something's missing or the story is incomplete.  But of course, that's just me -- aside from the lack of closure issue (which is a common feature of most short stories and definitely not exclusive to this book), I still enjoyed this collection immensely and absolutely recommend it.  Prior to reading this collection, I had actually never heard of this author before, but I'm happy to have discovered his work and look forward to reading more from him in the future.

 

Received ARC from HarperVia publishers via Edelweiss.

 

 

Review: Diamond Hill (by Kit Fan)

My Rating: 2 stars

 

I really really wanted to like this book…actually, not just like it, but love it. I mean, how often do I come across a book written in English that is set in my birth city of Hong Kong and is actually about HK people, places, culture, history, etc.  After reading the premise, my expectation was that this would be a story that was truly HK-focused, with an authentic portrayal of the city that wasn't written from a primarily Western point of view.  Going into this, I was excited and kept thinking to myself — finally, a book about the old HK that will satisfy the nostalgia I've been feeling lately about a city I've always loved, but had become increasingly foreign to me in recent years.  I went into this with high hopes and also preparing to rate it highly.  Unfortunately, this book turned out to be nothing like what I expected (in a bad way) and after reading it, instead of feeling nostalgic, I actually ended up feeling frustrated and disappointed.

 

The biggest issue I had with this book was that the writing was very disjointed and uneven, which wouldn't have been as bad of a problem except that the story overall was also poorly executed — both of these things, along with several other issues I found, made this an extremely frustrating read for me. In fact, I had actually wanted to DNF this book several times (which is not a good sign, as I'm a stickler for finishing every book I read), but I pressed on, reminding myself every couple pages of all the things I had mentioned above about why I had been so excited to read this.  I ultimately finished, but not without resorting to skimming the last 50 pages or so (because by that point, I was already at my wit's end).

 

The main thing about the writing and execution that frustrated me was the constant switching back and forth between style and tone — one minute, the writing would be eloquent, descriptive, even philosophical, but then the next minute, the writing would descend into profanity-laced vulgarities that seemed to come out of nowhere.  If this happened only once or twice, then it wouldn't be a problem, but the writing actually alternated between these two extremes for the entire story.  As if that weren't enough, there was also a lot of switching back and forth between English and either formal Chinese or Cantonese slang (with English translation in parentheses next to it) — normally, I would be happy to see a book written in English about Chinese culture / experience utilize Chinese characters as needed to enhance the story, but in this case, the switching was done haphazardly, in a random way that made absolutely no sense to me — for instance, randomly inserting Chinese (with English translation) in the middle of characters' dialogues or having some side character who only shows up for like a minute blurt out a bunch of profanities in Cantonese as a main character passes by.  Again, I would be fine with it if incorporating these phrases served a purpose in the story, advanced the plot, or were necessary to characterization— but none of it did…the phrases that the author chose to write in Chinese didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason to them.  From a character perspective, it didn't make sense for some of the characters to speak a hybrid of English / Cantonese to the extent that these characters did (yes, some Hong Kongers do mix some English in their speech, but most ordinary folks don't constantly switch back and forth between the two languages like that unless they're bicultural or they were educated overseas or in an international school where everything is taught in English).  It almost seemed like the author couldn't decide whether he wanted to write in English or Chinese and so decided to do a hodgepodge of both.  

In addition, I also found the prolific and gratuitous use of Cantonese slang words and profanities throughout the story not only unnecessary, but also annoying.  In the Author's Note at the end of the book, Kit Fan explains that he included the Cantonese slang and profanities in both Chinese and English throughout the book in order to "give a culturally distinctive inflection to a language that is under threat, not unlike the shanty town in the novel" – while I agree with the sentiment that Cantonese is a language that has increasingly come under threat over the years, I disagree with the method of sprinkling 'random Cantonese profanities + their English translations' throughout the story as a means of preserving the "vitality of the language."  Even if the author wanted to show the distinctive cultural flavor of Cantonese slang (or the language as a whole), incorporating a few phrases here and there would've been enough — but inundating the story with it, especially when majority of the slang and profanities were irrelevant to the story, that's going overboard in my opinion.  In terms of the translations in parentheses— perhaps because I am both a Cantonese and English speaker myself (as well as a translator for the Chinese/English language pairing), this method especially frustrated me, as my brain is wired to automatically compare the Chinese and English to see if it was translated correctly (quite a bit of it actually wasn't), so each time it switched to Chinese, I got jarred out of the story – basically, rather than enhancing the story or helping me appreciate it more, the Chinese words and phrases with its translations ended up being a distraction that made it difficult to concentrate on the story itself.

 

Speaking of the story – well, this was another aspect that I found problematic.  First of all, there wasn't really a plot to speak of – there were a lot of detailed descriptions of places and characters' surroundings, but little to no substance in terms of what actually happens.  If I had to summarize this book, I would say that it is essentially an "information dump about HK" – there is an abundance of name-dropping of various HK people, places, things, historical events, cultural aspects, etc., almost all of which would be recognizable to anyone decently familiar with the city, but none of it advanced the plot and very little (if any) was actually relevant to the story.  Even the characters had no depth to them -- it seemed like the main purpose of the characters was to either 1) describe their surroundings, or 2) regurgitate heaps of (oftentimes unnecessary and irrelevant) information about HK to anyone who would listen, or 3) insult others with some type of profanity / vulgarity and/or drop a random Chinese idiom in the middle of a lengthy, rambling discourse about things may or may not have been important, but I had already stopped caring by that point.

 

What bothered me most about this book though was the stereotypical way in which all the female characters were portrayed in the story.  Of course, I wasn't expecting a male author to write complex female characters completely accurately, but I was disappointed (and more than a bit miffed) that the author seemed to go the route of portraying all the women as sexual stereotypes who essentially fell into three categories:  the uptight, sex-deprived nun; the promiscuous, 'gangster wannabe' tomboy;  and the sex-crazy, possibly a little unhinged prostitute.  Though I understand that these portrayals probably weren't intentional on the author's part, as a woman, I found such depictions offensive and worrisome, especially since we've seen over the past year how harmful perpetuating such stereotypes can be.  

 

With all that said, I do believe in giving credit where it's due and so I have to say that the author did a pretty good job giving readers unfamiliar with HK a better understanding of what life in Diamond Hill was like back in the day.  The feelings of despair and uncertainty that were pretty widespread throughout HK in the years after the signing of the Joint Declaration were also well-depicted — feelings that were exacerbated tenfold after what happened in Tiananmen in 1989 (and sparked fears about the fate of Hong Kongers after the handover).

Even though this book absolutely didn't work for me, I am clearly the exception here given all the 4 and 5 star reviews I've seen for this one.  So I would say check out the other reviews so you can make an informed decision on whether you'd be interested in reading this one. 

Received ARC from World Editions via Edelweiss.