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moniipeters's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
mandirigma's review
3.0
I’m prone to giving books high marks if I actually manage to finish them. This one was weird — it was easy to keep turning the pages, but I was unable to put it down because I wanted more, and I kept hoping I’d find it on the next page. I don’t know if it’s just that this book comes highly recommended by all the blogs that maybe I just expected too much.
The premise was compelling to me: a Taiwanese immigrant family living in poverty in 1980’s Alaska, and dealing with the loss of the youngest child. In the first chapter, ten year old Gavin comes home from school with meningitis, and he wakes up a week later to find out that his younger sister also contracted meningitis but didn’t survive. The book details the slow unraveling of this family, and it’s almost too slow.
The characters — especially the parents — often acted in ways I didn’t understand, and while this could’ve easily been explained as a side effect of grief, the prose was too spare and vague and created too much distance between me and the characters to get me there. The pacing was weird in parts, and it made the climax frustrating to read through.
There’s a really important thread here, though. (And this might be a spoiler.) The father is ambivalent about Taiwan and seems wholly uninterested in going back to visit, despite both being unable to let go of (or unable to stop lying about) his accomplishments back in his homeland and also being so afraid of America that he refuses to ask for help from others. This is such an important part of the Asian male immigrant experience. However, we don’t really get the gravity of this until the final third of the book.
This might have just been a matter of taste, but I needed more from this book.
The premise was compelling to me: a Taiwanese immigrant family living in poverty in 1980’s Alaska, and dealing with the loss of the youngest child. In the first chapter, ten year old Gavin comes home from school with meningitis, and he wakes up a week later to find out that his younger sister also contracted meningitis but didn’t survive. The book details the slow unraveling of this family, and it’s almost too slow.
The characters — especially the parents — often acted in ways I didn’t understand, and while this could’ve easily been explained as a side effect of grief, the prose was too spare and vague and created too much distance between me and the characters to get me there. The pacing was weird in parts, and it made the climax frustrating to read through.
There’s a really important thread here, though. (And this might be a spoiler.) The father is ambivalent about Taiwan and seems wholly uninterested in going back to visit, despite both being unable to let go of (or unable to stop lying about) his accomplishments back in his homeland and also being so afraid of America that he refuses to ask for help from others. This is such an important part of the Asian male immigrant experience. However, we don’t really get the gravity of this until the final third of the book.
This might have just been a matter of taste, but I needed more from this book.
ryanbiscocho's review
3.0
I really wanted to like this but it was so difficult to motivate myself to continue reading. Have to say though, the author is incredible at creating atmosphere and some excerpts are just stellar but there's just not enough narrative to back it up.
This quote at the end absolutely hit: "It was a kind of violence, what my father had done. He had brought us to a place we didn't belong, and taken us from a place we did. Now we yearned for all places and found peace in none."
This quote at the end absolutely hit: "It was a kind of violence, what my father had done. He had brought us to a place we didn't belong, and taken us from a place we did. Now we yearned for all places and found peace in none."
ridgewaygirl's review
4.0
Chia-Chia Lin tells the story of a family coming apart. After emigrating from Taiwan, the family eventually settles in Alaska, where the father works digging wells and installing septic systems, jobs that go dormant during the long winter months. The family struggles financially and the parents' relationship is marked by hostility. Then, one of the four children dies of meningitis and the father is sued by a customer and the fault-lines in the family split open.
The book is told from the point of view of eleven-year-old Gavin, who struggles to fit in at school and who is sinking under the weight of the guilt he feels for having given his sister the disease that killed her. There is no room for his grief and nobody he can talk to about what happened in his family, where everyone is coming apart in different ways.
This is a beautifully told story, where the geography and weather of Alaska are so vividly described. Telling the story from the point of view of a child whose understanding of events is both incomplete and half-understood gives the novel a cloudy feel as Gavin struggles to make sense of the unexplained.
The book is told from the point of view of eleven-year-old Gavin, who struggles to fit in at school and who is sinking under the weight of the guilt he feels for having given his sister the disease that killed her. There is no room for his grief and nobody he can talk to about what happened in his family, where everyone is coming apart in different ways.
This is a beautifully told story, where the geography and weather of Alaska are so vividly described. Telling the story from the point of view of a child whose understanding of events is both incomplete and half-understood gives the novel a cloudy feel as Gavin struggles to make sense of the unexplained.
efjens's review
4.0
Such a well written, though provoking novel! The prose is beautiful and fluid, the themes of grief and family are explored with such weight and care. The child narrator captures a childlike experience without seeming too innocent or childish. Objectively a five star read, but I did struggle to pay attention to the audiobook so personally just a four star read.
harryhas29's review
4.0
Don't stand right in the silt - you can't be sure that you'll be able to pull yourself out.