Take a photo of a barcode or cover
dtchantel 's review for:
Shanghailanders
by Juli Min
***I won a copy of this book through a LibraryThing Early Reviewer's Giveaway. My review is strictly voluntary.***
This novel is heartbreaking in its simplicity and yet breathtaking in its complexity. Each vignette takes you further into the lives of a family whose individual members have secrets, sadness and sufferings of their own, unknown to the others. The regression into the past works extremely well and actually added to the overall poignancy of the story, as you already know how the hopeful dreams and bloom of first love will end up and how the innocence of youth is an ephemeral thing. In fact, all of the interconnected stories in this amazing book leave you yearning for something that is just out of reach, for a life that you almost could've had and for that whisper of a dream you had as a child that you can almost recall, but that slowly fades away like the morning dew.
This novel is heartbreaking in its simplicity and yet breathtaking in its complexity. Each vignette takes you further into the lives of a family whose individual members have secrets, sadness and sufferings of their own, unknown to the others. The regression into the past works extremely well and actually added to the overall poignancy of the story, as you already know how the hopeful dreams and bloom of first love will end up and how the innocence of youth is an ephemeral thing. In fact, all of the interconnected stories in this amazing book leave you yearning for something that is just out of reach, for a life that you almost could've had and for that whisper of a dream you had as a child that you can almost recall, but that slowly fades away like the morning dew.