Reviews with content warning for Bullying - Our Missing Hearts

Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

32 reviews

theblushbookworm's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

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

4.5

Wow this book really struck me. I grew up on dystopian novels, and Ng pulls all the best parts of the genre to give a message on Asian American hate, children being taken as a means of control, and the dangers of bystander culture. This novel is powerful, well-written, and a worthy read for anyone.

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katrinky's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.0

not an easy book to read. imagine the handmaid's tale, but about anti-asian racism and xenophobia. the book touches on linguistics, guerilla art, including yarn bombs, and folklore, so of course I was compelled from start to finish. read it in 1.5 days, both of them work days, so that tells you something about the pace and the ease with which I got invested in bird, his mom, margaret, and their lives under PACT ACT America. chilling, maybe hopeful? mostly wary, and clear-eyed about America's worst propensities.

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kellyofcali's review

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Admittedly, I was trapped on a plane when I read this, but I also read ALL of it in one plane ride - I found it really haunting and timely and beautiful. The author does a wonderful job painting a world close enough to ours where it's quite frightening - it feels like a place we could easily go from where we are now - yet also instilling hope, and hope that comes so much from peace and art, which sings to my soul. Hard, difficult, and yet not totally crushing.

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heatherjchin's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense 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

4.5

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snowdog's review

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

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

4.25

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cocacolor's review

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emotional inspiring sad medium-paced

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

4.25

This is a difficult book to review; I was unbelievably excited for it as soon as I heard of it, and certainly part of the disappointment comes from how high my expectations were. It's not Ng's best effort. It's almost too timely; I don't think it'll hold up as well 25 or even 5 years from now (depending on how the political climate goes). And it's a book whose reception depends on the reader being exactly as far left as Ng, and no more. This novel's audience seems to be speaking to a particular demographic, the comfortable "moderate, don't-do-politics" upper middle class, particularly Asian American members; there's an almost cloying expectation that you empathize with Margaret and Bird's discoveries of all that's wrong in the world, because you've gone through a similar wake-up call yourself recently.

Personally, as a Chinese American reader who's probably farther left than Ng, I found it embarrassing. Part of the novel still feels, to me, like an attempt to co-opt the suffering of Black and Indigenous communities, an almost childish, cynical attempt to insist, "Hey, Asian Americans have it bad, too, where's our solidarity?" Eventually my attitude toward the premise mellowed; Ng does make a good-faith effort to acknowledge that if the state using family separation as a tactic is news to you, that's willful blindness on your part, and to include the history of how this violence has been and is still being used against Black and Indigenous families, even if I don't think she goes far enough in that respect to really acknowledge who is actually being subjected to this tactic today.

Beyond the somewhat disrespectful nature of the premise, I found that Ng's writing suffered as well from its clumsy politics. There's none of the complexity of character from LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE or EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU here;

Bird and Margaret and Ethan are almost saintly, the resentments disappearing easily, seeming betrayals turning out to be partnership and devotion after all.

The

sexual violence Margaret experiences at the hands of a cop

comes out of nowhere and feels like a cynical, clumsy shortcut to convey how bad the world has gotten--again, de-centering the Black and Indigenous women overwhelmingly affected by this kind of violence.

Still, Ng's half-hearted effort is beyond what most writers could achieve on their best day, and I don't want to hold Ng to a higher standard than I do her contemporaries; if I found OUR MISSING HEARTS to be clumsy or self-centered at times, I'd definitely feel the same and more of the vast majority of writers if they'd tried to write this novel. Her prose is as beautiful as ever, and understanding this novel is meant to be read as a fable about the power of art and narrative turns issues I'd had with the early parts of the book into unexpected joys. Overall, not as good as I hoped but not as bad as I feared. Still eagerly looking forward to Ng's next project.

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kelly_e's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective 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? No

3.75

Title: Our Missing Hearts
Author: Celeste Ng
Genre: Dystopian
Rating: 3.75
Pub Date: October 4, 2022

T H R E E • W O R D S

Contemplative • Forceful • Moving

📖 S Y N O P S I S

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in Harvard University's library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve "American culture" in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic-including the work of Bird's mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.

Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn't know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn't wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.

💭 T H O U G H T S

I had been hesitating on picking up Our Missing Hearts since it's release last fall, mostly because dystopian novels aren't ones I typically gravitate towards. And while, I don't regret reading it, it is certainly my least favourite of Celeste Ng's books.

I must start off by saying, as always, Celeste's writing is absolutely beautiful! It's complex, layered and deeply evocative. And while, this book tackles a lot - including themes of family and sacrifice, as well as library resistance, racially motivated injustice, and the removal of children as a means of political powers - this dystopian novel tis an ode to motherhood.

When it comes to the characters, I'd have liked significantly more character development. Each of the characters felt very one dimensional, verging on young adult. Additionally, I didn't necessarily connect with the mother at all, even though I found her sacrifice to be selfless. I did have a soft spot for Bird as he'd gone through so much at such a young age.

When it comes to style, one of my biggest pet peeves is when no quotation marks are used, which was the case here. I know this is a stylistic tool used by authors, but it's just one I cannot get behind as I find it disrupts the flow of my reading. For this reason, I had to switch to mainly the audio (where you don't notice this fact), and the audio is very well done.

At the end of the day, Our Missing Hearts verged on being a little too political for me at this point in time. It is a beautiful reflection on motherhood, and a book to spark discussion and shift perspectives. Overall, the premise was certainly intriguing, but the execution was lacking. And yet, I'll continue to read everything Celeste Ng writes simply because her writing is a gift.

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• readers who enjoy stories of motherhood
• Celeste Ng fans
• bookclubs

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"If we fear something, it is all the more imperative we study it thoroughly."

"Who ever thinks, recalling the face of the one they loved who is gone: yes, I looked at you enough, I loved you enough, we had enough time, any of this was enough?"

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