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A review by knod78
Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng
3.0
Hmmmm to the ending, is all I have to say. I give this book 3.5 stars.
I won this book on the Goodreads giveaway. I really did like the book, but I also felt like I was missing something, like I'm hearing the account of this story third hand. There just seemed to be details missing for such a short book with lots of characters and the author spent too much time on other unimportant characters to full develop any of the main ones. I loved reading about what Chinese people went through (especially the art ones) during the cultural revolution and during the one baby household. I loved the description of Trout River and I felt like Momo's parents were wonderful. I wanted them as parents.
However, the ending??? WTF? I mean is that Dawn or Viridiana come to visit Junie or someone else? And speaking of Dawn, what was the point of her character seriously? I get the initial character plot of her and Momo, because she gave him classical music and the violin, which sets up Momo. But then, it said he never heard from her again. I expected to drop her character from the story all together. Yet, we got her story throughout the book. Though for what purpose? I didn't see how her story was essential to the plot unless she was the stranger at the end. Then, that poses another question if she was, how did she know about Junie? I mean Viridiana knew about the kid sort of, but Momo was a stranger to her. I just didn't get it. I thought Junie would be the main core of this story since the title reflected what she said to her grandpa, but she really wasn't.
All in all, I liked the book, but I didn't love it mainly because the ending and I felt like we wasted too much time on Dawn's character, characters that popped up in America and not enough time on Junie or Momo or Cassia. Very rushed ending too.
I won this book on the Goodreads giveaway. I really did like the book, but I also felt like I was missing something, like I'm hearing the account of this story third hand. There just seemed to be details missing for such a short book with lots of characters and the author spent too much time on other unimportant characters to full develop any of the main ones. I loved reading about what Chinese people went through (especially the art ones) during the cultural revolution and during the one baby household. I loved the description of Trout River and I felt like Momo's parents were wonderful. I wanted them as parents.
However, the ending??? WTF? I mean is that Dawn or Viridiana come to visit Junie or someone else? And speaking of Dawn, what was the point of her character seriously? I get the initial character plot of her and Momo, because she gave him classical music and the violin, which sets up Momo. But then, it said he never heard from her again. I expected to drop her character from the story all together. Yet, we got her story throughout the book. Though for what purpose? I didn't see how her story was essential to the plot unless she was the stranger at the end. Then, that poses another question if she was, how did she know about Junie? I mean Viridiana knew about the kid sort of, but Momo was a stranger to her. I just didn't get it. I thought Junie would be the main core of this story since the title reflected what she said to her grandpa, but she really wasn't.
All in all, I liked the book, but I didn't love it mainly because the ending and I felt like we wasted too much time on Dawn's character, characters that popped up in America and not enough time on Junie or Momo or Cassia. Very rushed ending too.