Review: What Alice Forgot (by Liane Moriarty)

My rating: 4 stars

A few weeks ago, I was on a trip and had an unexpected layover at the airport for a few hours.  Unfortunately, I didn't have access to my Kindle at the time and hadn't brought along any other books to read, so I went browsing at the airport bookstore in the hopes of finding something to hold me over for that brief period of time.  Most people who travel probably know how expensive it is to buy anything at the airport and of course, books are no exception – as much as I love books, I'm also sensible enough to know not to throw away $20 to $30 buying a book at the airport when I could get the same book elsewhere for a fraction of the cost.  So it probably shouldn't come as a surprise then, that when I was looking for a book to buy, my main area of concern was the price tag – I wanted to find a book that was decently priced (which to me had to be under $10) but also had to be one that I would be interested in reading.  Needless to say, there weren't too many books that fit the bill (amazingly, there were only a handful of paperbacks that were under $10 – I checked several stores too!).  After spending the better part of an hour browsing several stores, I settled on the paperback re-release of Liane Moriarty's What Alice Forgot, as the premise sounded interesting, plus I wanted to read something lighter, a "palette cleanser" of sorts after the slew of "heavy" reads I've had over the past few months (the original version of the book came out in 2009 but the particular paperback version I bought was released in December of last year).  This is technically not my first time reading a book by Liane Moriarty, as I had attempted one of her books several years ago but was not able to get into it and ended up setting the book aside indefinitely (still haven't gone back to it even now), so of course I was a bit wary about attempting yet another one of her books and possibly not liking it (but being stuck with it due to the circumstances at the time).  Well, it turns out I didn't have to worry after all, as this book ended up being the right choice for me and also a good "re-introduction" to an author whose works I will definitely be reading more of in the future.

What Alice Forgot is about a woman named Alice Love who has a nasty fall during one of her gym classes and when she wakes up, she slowly realizes that she has lost all memories of the last decade in her life.  She thinks it is 1998 when she is 29 and blissfully married to her soulmate Nick, and they are happily expecting their first child in a couple months – in reality, it is actually 2008, she is on the cusp of her 40^th birthday, she has THREE kids (2 girls and a boy), and that "blissful" marriage is headed toward divorce, with Alice and her "soon-to-be ex" Nick embroiled in a bitter custody battle over the children.  Oh and in 2008, Alice is also semi-estranged from her beloved older sister Elizabeth, whom she was very close to throughout her life, and also her widower mother Barb has shockingly married her (ex) husband Nick's philandering father Roger.  As if that weren't enough, Alice supposedly has a new "boyfriend" now too who happens to be the principal at her children's school where she is also (apparently) the ultimate PTA mom heavily involved in all of the school's major events and activities.  How is it possible to lose 10 years' worth of memories?   With all its jarring differences, how is Alice going to reconcile this supposedly "new" life of hers with the "old" one?  Will she get her memory back?  And what happens when she finally does?   

This was a fun, entertaining, and overall delightful read, one that I'm glad I picked up!  The book was longer than I expected (the newly released paperback version I bought was 500+ pages), but the story was so engaging that it actually didn't "feel" long or draggy at all.  It did take me longer to finish this one but that was more of a timing issue on my part due to being so busy at work after returning from my trip that I barely had time to sleep and eat properly, let alone read.  I liked most of the characters in this story and even though I can't say that there was much deep characterization or anything tremendously unique about these characters versus those in other similar stories, but I still found myself rooting for them anyway.  In terms of the story itself – sure, there were some moments where I had to suspend disbelief a little bit and some parts were a little too contrived while the ending was admittedly kind of sappy, but I'm fine with all that because I wasn't expecting a "literary masterpiece" or anything of that sort in the first place.  I wanted a lighter read with just the right amount of substance and intrigue to capture my interest – this book absolutely delivered that and much much more!  Enjoyable and definitely recommended!

Review: Little Reunions (by Eileen Chang, translated by Martin Mertz & Jane Weizhan Pan)

 My Rating: 3.5 stars

Let me start off by saying that Eileen Chang is one of my favorite Chinese authors.  I was an Asian Studies major back in college and it was in one of the many Chinese Literature classes I took back then that I was first exposed to Eileen Chang’s writing.  The very first work I read of Chang’s happened to be her most famous and critically acclaimed novella “The Golden Cangue” – the version I read was from the anthology Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas: 1919-1949 (published by Columbia University Press in the 1980s), which I found out later was a version that had been translated by Chang herself (Chang was fluent in both Chinese and English and wrote in both languages, though most of her earlier works were in Chinese and she only started writing in English after moving from Shanghai to Hong Kong – and later to the United States -- in the 1950s).  Since then, I have read many of Chang’s works off and on and also watched my fair share of movies / TV series that had been adapted from Chang’s various works over the years.  As one of the most famous and influential Chinese writers of the 20th century, Chang’s repertoire was quite prolific – in addition to writing short stories, novellas, essays, and novels, she also wrote screenplays and scripts for both film and stage as well as did translation work for her own works and those of others.   One of the things that set Chang apart from many of her contemporaries during her time was the fact that much of her writing focused on the complexity of relationships, love, family, societal conventions, and everyday life (in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), but without the heavy political slant that was a common characteristic in much of the Chinese literature of that period (ironically though, despite Chang’s largely apolitical stance and her focus on writing love stories set against the backdrop of the time period in which she lived, two of her most well-known works -- both written after she moved to the U.S. in the mid-1950s -- were widely viewed as being “anti-Communist propaganda” due to her searing criticisms of everyday life under Communist China, which caused her works to be banned in Mainland China for many decades).  Many of Chang’s works were known for being semi-autobiographical in nature, as her stories often reflected the bitterness, anguish, resentment, disappointments and loneliness that marred much of her childhood and adult life – also, her characters’ often complicated family dynamics as well as frustratingly bitter romantic relationships, most of which usually ended in tragedy, were common themes in her narratives that in large part mirrored her own experiences. In her later years and up until her death in 1995, Chang became increasingly reclusive and chose to live an intensely private life in an apartment in Los Angeles, largely cut off from the outside world.

Knowing the above background context and also having already read quite a few of Chang’s earlier works, I went into Little Reunions expecting to see the same beautiful, emotionally poignant storytelling that Chang was known for.  In a way, this book, more than her previous works, can be considered her most personal work, as the character of Julie – the main protagonist in the story – is said to be a reflection of Chang’s own self.  Indeed, Julie’s family background in the story was very similar to Chang’s:  born into a deeply traditional, aristocratic family in Shanghai, to an opium-addicted, abusive father and a sophisticated, worldly mother, Julie was constantly surrounded by a revolving door of meddling relatives and extended family, yet emotionally she was lonely and indifferent as a result of never having experienced true love and support from parents whose lives were selfishly defined by constant love affairs and infidelities.  Later, Julie meets the charismatic Chih-yung, a fellow writer who later becomes a traitor working for the Japanese puppet government.  Despite Chih-yung already being married and simultaneously attached to other women, Julie engages in a love affair with him, even agreeing to marry him in secret.  At the same time, Julie has to deal with her mother’s often cold and indifferent attitude toward her.  Just like her relationship with Chih-yung, Julie’s relationship with her mother is fraught with emotional complexity amidst long intervals of necessary “separations” and subsequent “little reunions”.  Through Julie, Chang provides insight into the lives of a privileged yet deeply dysfunctional family as they deal with the realities of a country at war (the Japanese occupation of China and the subsequent escalation into WWII), but on a more significant level, she provides intimate and often candid insight into her relationship with the 2 people she loved most – her mother and her first husband.

Overall, I would say that this was an interesting story, though definitely not as good as Chang’s previous works.  I know that Chang’s writing style changed quite a bit in her later years, especially in the 1960s and 70s when she lived primarily in the U.S. and tried to adapt her writing to mainstream American society.  The difference in writing style aside though, it’s important to note the back history of this book and why such a fan of Chang’s work like myself is more than willing to overlook whatever flaws may exist with this book.  Eileen Chang actually wrote Little Reunions back in 1976 and upon its completion, she sent the 600+ page handwritten manuscript to her close friend (and literary executor of all her works) Stephen Soong and his wife Mae Fong.  After reading the manuscript and understanding the autobiographical nature of the story, the Soongs were concerned that the story’s explosive content – especially the detailed descriptions of Julie’s (Chang’s) intimate relationship with Chih-yung (Chang’s ex-husband Wu Lan-cheng) – could bring untold condemnation upon Chang.  They were also concerned that Chang’s ex-husband, the traitor Wu Lan-cheng (who was hiding out in Taiwan at the time and was supposedly waiting for an opportunity to rebuild what he had lost) may try to use the contents of the book to further exploit her (and possibly destroy her).  Due to these concerns, the Soongs and Chang decided to “indefinitely hold off” on publishing the novel – over the next 20 years, Chang would continue to make small edits to the manuscript, though it was unclear whether the fully revised version ever got sent to the Soongs.  In 1992, in a letter to the Soongs to discuss her will, Chang expressed her intention to “destroy” the manuscript of Little Reunions that was in existence.  Three years later, Chang died unexpectedly and one year after that, Stephen Soong also passed away (Mrs. Soong continued to preserve Chang’s manuscript of Little Reunions up until her own death in 2007).  In 2009, with the permission of the Soongs’ son Yi-lang, who had taken over for his parents as the literary executor to Chang’s works as well as estate, the original, unedited version of the manuscript (in Chinese) was published in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China – 14 years after Chang’s death.  The version released this year by NYRB (New York Review of Books) is the very first translation of Chang’s “autobiographical” novel into English (published 9 years after the Chinese version came out in Asia and 42 years after the original book was written). 

With this being one of Chang’s very last published works – and the one that most closely paralleled her own life -- I feel honored to have gotten the chance to read this book.  Even though I did have some issues with the nonlinear format of the narrative (which made the story a little hard to follow, especially with the multitude of characters/family members that flitted in and out throughout the story) and also the writing was not what I expected (possibly due to the translation), these were relatively minor issues in the overall scheme of things.  For fans of Eileen Chang’s works, this is definitely a “must-read,” though I would recommend reading the original Chinese version in order to hear Chang’s story in her own voice.  (Note: After reading the English version, I actually went and bought the Chinese version, as Eileen Chang had a unique narrative voice that no amount of translation could ever do justice to.  Some time in the near future, I hope to re-read this book in it’s original context and once I do, I’ll definitely come back here to update this review).

Received ARC from NYRB (New York Review of Books) via Edelweiss