Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Little Gods by Meng Jin

10 reviews

lizmart88's review against another edition

emotional reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is a brilliant novel, and I devoured it! Wow, what a story. Meng Jin builds such a cool structure where we see someone (Su Lan) and their life without ever hearing from their own voice. The story is told from Su Lan's daughter Liya, now grappling with her mother's death when she is very young in her early twenties. And from Su Lan's former husband and Liya's father (unbeknownst to her) telling the story of his life. We also hear from Su Lan's former housemate who knew her for a few years.

The story is told not in linear fashion and it does such a good job of pivoting from person to person and across times. It felt like every scene was perfectly chosen to reveal something about the character.

Definitely recommend!

Content Warnings

nil033's review against another edition

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challenging reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

mharris61's review against another edition

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reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.5

Content Warnings

bethebluebook's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Content Warnings

kappafrog's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

kaneebli's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

mzynda's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

koreanlinda's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

At first, I was baffled by the title. Is this a story about gods? I found the structure awkward as well. The book starts with a chapter titled “The End” and makes two rotations of three main characters through their points of view: Zhu Wen > Yongzong > Liya > Zhu Wen > Yongzong > Liya. And in the center of their story stands Su Lan.

What I liked the most was how deeply flawed all the characters are. While pursuing what they want in their lives, they uncontrollably go through obsessions and delusions. Who doesn’t? Su Lan struggles to take care of her little daughter Liya as a single mother and invents games to keep her quiet at work. For example, Liya would sit still and pretend to be a rock or statue. (p.83).

I felt a bit frustrated to follow Liya, a self-centered young adult who is not thinking straight

after her mother's death

. She was an epitome of obsessions and delusions; however, I had gotten to understand her better toward the end of the book. I learned how the absence of the past affects an individual's mental stability; how it sets them on a desperate search for their roots and grounds.

While Liya alone moves through spaces, we get to see a lot through Zhu Wen and Yongzong, too. Meng Jin talks about social issues through Zhu Wen’s narratives: “I have never been interested in political matters. For a person like me (poor and unemployed with a disability), it does not matter who holds power—I will always remain outside the hierarchy, in that group of people everyone pities and secretly wishes did not exist because they would rather not bother with pity.” (p.115)

The level of concreteness abruptly changes in the last chapter “The Beginning.” Meng Jin even tries to make the existence of Yongzong murky: the nurse states Su Lan’s husband died when she was at the Beijing hospital but then later witnessed a man rising from death.

What keeps the whole story consistent is the ever-so-present question about time: “how to remember the future and forget the past?” Meng Jin asks. It gets hard to keep track of time and where we are as we travel through multiple characters’ points of view in different years. Without a clear lineage of time, the stories around Su Lan collapse on one another and come into our heads as a big chunk. Maybe that is how Liya felt while chasing and collecting bits of information about her past, and we get to experience it ourselves.

Circling back to the title, I find it quite alienated from the theme or idea of the novel, and here is Meng Jin's explanation in an interview with Rhianna Walton for Powell's:

Honestly, I didn't think too hard about the title and what it meant on a larger scale. It popped out to me as a phrase on the page. I liked how it came up in this almost inconsequential, side-note way. As a writer, I tend to go towards mystery. I write very much by intuition. The title just felt right to me.

Review by Linda (she/they)
Twitter @KoreanLindaPark
Letter writer at DefinitelyNotOkay.com

Content Warnings

aster_isms's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful mysterious reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Little Gods by Meng Jin is an amazing book, detailing the life and mystery of Su Lan, as we learn of her from her old neighbor, a friend, and her daughter.

1. Entertainment

10/10
This book was really entertaining to me. Something about it, I don't know, was really captivating and made me want to keep reading. I would pick up the book and next thing I knew, I was 50 pages later. It didn't feel like parts dragged on for too long or a place was too short. The mystery of figuring out who Su Lan really was was also pretty captivating.

2. Characters

8/10

The characters (except for Zhang Bo and Zhu Wen) were pretty unlikeable at times, but I think that works pretty well for the book and definitely isn't a negative critique of the book.
Li Yongzong: The faults of this character captivated me, although it wasn't too much to write home about. Spoilers for the book ahead:

His sheer love of Su Lan (purely out of her beauty if we are being honest) was written really well, I think, especially as we saw the opposing views to what he thought. His mistreatment of Zhang Bo also goes well with his character that was established. It was really smart to have him basically run away during Liya's birth: He always ran away from the consequences of his actions. Really well done.

8/10
Su Lan: What is there to say about Su Lan without saying WOW. This book was amazing, at portraying her, both in her faults and in her virtues. Spoilers ahead:

The dynamic of her being originally an ambitious, shy girl with a love of photography and academia into a jaded woman, who hated photography and academia, purely because of Yongzong's leaving of her. We see the sheer love of her from Zhang Bo and Li Yongzong, but also the contradictions of her from Zhu Wen, and finally the meanness of her from Liya. Absolutely AMAZING.

10/10
Zhang Bo: Really loved his character, although it did kind of feel like he didn't have any faults at all. 8/10
Zhu Wen: I also really liked how she was written! Even though anything outside of her interactions with Su Lan wasn't terribly important to the story, it really felt like you got to know her and her relationship with her husband, Tao Kun. As she grew more spiritual and believing in ghosts, you could also see her deteoriating mental abilities. 8/10
Liya: She is really interesting to me, but I feel like out of all the characters she was the most poorly developed, despite being the person we are mainly looking through the story with, and why we are even reading this story in the first place. I wouldn't say she is particularly likeable, but I understand her decisions. 6/10

3. Plot

9.5/10

I actually really enjoyed the plot of the book! Figuring out about the identity and who Su Lan was was really fun. Don't have much to say, it was just really good. It did deviate from the plot a bit, especially in personal letters with Zhu Wen and Li Yongzong, but I don't think that is bad, just due to the fact that its the characters talking about themselves.

4. Writing style

8.75/10

Writing style was REALLY good. I loved the switch in perspective between Zhu Wen, Li Yongzong, and Liya who all gave different views and relationships to Su Lan. I didn't particularly like the ending, though, which I will give as its main problem. The lack of use for quotation marks I don't really get, either.

5. Editing

10/10
Saw basically no problems with this, chapters segmented nicely.

Content Warnings

imaginaryempire's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Content Warnings

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