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A review by bookappetit
The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin
4.0
The Unpassing is the somber story of a Taiwanese immigrant family living life in Alaska during the 1980s. It is told from the perspective of Gavin, who is ten years old. At the beginning of the novel, Gavin contracts meningitis from school. He wakes up from his coma to a new reality- his little sister, Ruby, has died. Throughout the book, Gavin’s father cannot use his advanced degree so they are living in poverty, his mother is resentful and wants to go back to Taiwan, his older sister changes her name and is out of the house a lot and Natty, poor Natty. Natty was considered Ruby’s twin - they were just a year apart. His coming to terms with life after Ruby is perhaps the most harrowing. He seeks Ruby out everywhere, openly grasping at straws for answers to what happened. Gavin doesn’t understand the depth of the grief him and his family are experiencing, but the readers can feel it. It is all encompassing. This tragedy has left them raw. Lin’s writing is superb. She is able to write such seemingly simple sentences that engender so much emotion.
I was really drawn to what Chia-Chia Lin said in an interview about the name of this novel- absences have always called out to me. Something was once here, and now it is not. What is left behind? It’s not merely an empty space or a void. There is something real and tangible enough that it’s able to muscle into your daily life and crowd out other concerns, or consume air and attention and change the dynamics of the room. I wanted a title that reflected this contradiction—that something or someone who has left your life (passing away, passing out of it) could also, at the same time, re-enter your life with a brute, overwhelming force. Linguistically, “un” words are also just fascinating to me. Unknowing something or unspeaking something is essentially impossible. These words are often accompanied by the word “can’t”; you can’t unknow something, you can’t unspeak something. You can’t go back to the place where you started from. The word itself takes up more room than it used to, now that it’s got this appendage. But it’s not a mere negation or an undoing. It’s a different creature altogether.
I was really drawn to what Chia-Chia Lin said in an interview about the name of this novel- absences have always called out to me. Something was once here, and now it is not. What is left behind? It’s not merely an empty space or a void. There is something real and tangible enough that it’s able to muscle into your daily life and crowd out other concerns, or consume air and attention and change the dynamics of the room. I wanted a title that reflected this contradiction—that something or someone who has left your life (passing away, passing out of it) could also, at the same time, re-enter your life with a brute, overwhelming force. Linguistically, “un” words are also just fascinating to me. Unknowing something or unspeaking something is essentially impossible. These words are often accompanied by the word “can’t”; you can’t unknow something, you can’t unspeak something. You can’t go back to the place where you started from. The word itself takes up more room than it used to, now that it’s got this appendage. But it’s not a mere negation or an undoing. It’s a different creature altogether.