A review by giter161
Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng

3.0

The way this book starts was a little deceiving because I thought it was mostly going to focus on the little girl’s life with her grandparents and then moving to America to adjust to living with parents she hasn’t seen in years. However this is absolutely not the storyline of this book. After the first 20 pages we delve far into the past into the growing up of each of her parents and their experiences in China during the Cultural Revolution. I’ve read a lot of books set during this period and this might be one of the weakest. I feel it really only hit it’s stride once her parents are in America reflecting on the ways their lives have changed or they have grown apart from their homeland and each other. Maybe my expectations were just wrong? The prose is very beautiful at times and one chapter stands out above all the rest about untranslatable words in Chinese told through short glimpses of one of the character’s first loves. This specific portion feels like it was written first and made me wish more of the book had this tone.