Reviews

The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin

rhae_t's review

sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

2.5

nootchybean's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

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

4.0

misslezlee's review

3.0

I swear my computer is tracking me, suggesting books to read, infiltrating my library account, my Amazon account, and everywhere I go. Last year, all I ended up reading were dystopian novels. Now, it seems that the theme is immigrants. I do not remember putting a hold on this novel, but it popped up and had to be dealt with *urgently* or else...
It’s like an Alaskan Suggie Bain, except not quite so bleak. A Korean family living in a rundown house on the edge of town suffers a series of disasters that tear them apart. Set in the mid 1980s with references to the Challenger disaster, the story is narrated by one of the sons. The whole novel has the feel of an art house movie. Something from The Film Movement, maybe.

mimosaeyes's review

4.0

A poignant, emotively-written story about the American Dream and notions of masculinity. Lin wrings a lot of mileage out of Gavin's perspective, as events unfold murkily or obliquely through his ten-year-old eyes. I'm not very fond of the way the family's plight gets resolved - hence, my rating is more like 3.5 stars - but the novel ends on a nicely balanced final image, speaking to the lasting impact of struggle on immigrants.

internationalreads's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Grief, Xenophobia, Death, Abandonment, Terminal illness, Eating disorder, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, and Racism

georgie_mb's review

4.0

I absolutely adored this. This was such a little nugget of gold looking at the life of a Taiwanese family living in Alaska, with the aftermath of losing one of the members to illness.

All the characters were fairly complex, and sometimes it was difficult to connect completely with them, but they were also so unique that I couldn’t help loving them.

I found it fascinating noticing the customs that the family had brought over, coupled with them trying to live with not a lot of money coming in, mixed with moments of beauty as they children would escape to the woods next to their house. The description of nature is really captivating.

samantha's review

5.0

"I was driving away from it all when a radio broadcast came on and an astronaut mid-mission began to read a letter to his son. It was a bunch of nothing — plain declarations of love and unoriginal philosophizing — but a shaking fit overtook me, and I had to pull off the road. Who knows what it was? Those same gray mountains through the windshield, or the thinness of the clouds. My father would have liked to be that man, I knew — he'd fancied himself some kind of pioneer — and maybe I would have liked to be the son of someone who had ventured and succeeded. Or maybe it was just the direct address coming through the speakers at me, all the way from space. The expanse made him totally unfettered. The distance stripped his words. There was no self-consciousness, only sentiment: I'm out here, and I'm thinking of you."

megankholley's review

4.0

This book is incredibly sad. The writing is absolutely beautiful. I have so many thoughts, but ultimately I think it is a portrait of what can happen to people in complete isolation, along with the internalization of emotions. We need one another. I found large portions of it difficult to read, the father forcing his son to eat, the seemingly complete neglect of the children, the absolute loneliness of each character living under one roof. Then there are more layers of complexity, immigration, the language barrier, the foreign and frozen setting, the economic challenges. The worst part is that there really is no resolution or infusion of hope. It just ends.

rojerwilko's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense 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

3.75

brobee's review

dark emotional medium-paced

4.0