From Publishers Weekly
A complicated sister bond echoes through generations in this somber follow-up to Chang's well-received debut novella and stories,
Hunger. In China in the early 1930s, sisters Junan and Yinan are inseparable, even as Junan matures into beauty and Yinan remains awkward and plain. Junan enters into an arranged marriage and falls in love with Li Ang, her soldier husband. Separated from him when the Japanese invade China, Junan sends the unmarried Yinan to keep her husband's household. What is intended as an arrangement of convenience turns to betrayal when Li Ang and Yinan have an affair. As China is divided by communism, the family is also rent in two. Junan and her daughters Hong (who is also the narrator) and Hwa end up in the States, while Yinan and Li Ang remain in mainland China with their son and are effectively banished from memory. It is memory—rather than dramatic action—at which Chang excels; her prose is lovely, but even images of the turmoil of war and displacement read at somewhat of a remove. Still, the sense of long family histories both spoken and unspoken is powerful, and the restrained conclusion has the force of Ishiguro's
The Remains of the Day. Chang's sophomore effort may not chart new ground, but is still a solid effort.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In China in 1931, two sisters are coping with their grief in the aftermath of their mother's suicide. Cool, reserved Junan makes dreamy Yinan her primary focus and anchor, while their preoccupied father gambles away his fortune. As part of a reconciliation of his debts, he promises Junan in marriage to the young lieutenant Li-Ang. Although she struggles to preserve her distance and her dignity, Junan falls deeply in love with her new husband, but her upbringing and her mother's influence render her cold and possessive. When the young couple is separated during the Japanese invasion, Junan sends Yinan to stay with her husband, unconsciously setting in motion the betrayal that will haunt their family for generations. The novel, set in both China and the U.S., is narrated by Junan's daughter, and its inherent drama is heightened by the delicacy and restraint with which it is told. Chang fulfills the promise of her haunting short-story collection,
Hunger (1998), with an elegant first novel that seems impossibly wise about the strictures of love and culture.
Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
