Review by Booklist Review
Every day, young Red Guards carry a coffin out of the Wukang Mansion where Ling lives. The life of the former ballerina, whose affairs with other women are considered criminal in 1960s China, opens this collection of stories that crosses seven decades between the 1940s and early 2000s with a kaleidoscopic view of women whose struggles echo through generations. These include the old college friends who escaped arrest and reminisce about revolution in a French cathedral; a Shanghainese cook who finds work--after her husband goes underground infiltrating guerrillas--creating simple meals for none other than Madame Chiang Kai-shek; and a musician sent to a camp in the country for thought reform whose folk-music composition leads to fame and freedom. Even for those who left China behind for the U.S. or France, the reckoning with the Chinese Revolution and its aftermath looms large. With shattering clarity, Sze-Lorrain teases apart the layers of complicity and survival that create a web of secrets, casting doubt on ever knowing the full truth behind each person's story.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Sze-Lorrain's graceful debut collection, women negotiate the violence of pivotal events in Chinese history. "Death at the Wukang Mansion" takes place in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution, when an accomplished ballerina is banished to a mansion and watches the same coffin entering and leaving the building with a different body each day. In "Cooking for Madame Chiang," a former servant of Madame Chiang Kai-shek works in the nationalist leader's household in 1946. Sze-Lorrain picks up with the narrator years later, in "Green," dealing with the suspicion for her role in "the old aristocratic society." In "The Invisible Window," set in 2016, three Chinese women meet in a Paris cathedral to reminisce about their involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, while the title story traces the rise and fall of a famous guzheng player during Mao Zedong's reign. Sze-Lorrain effortlessly evokes the spirit of each setting, be it the ardent fervor of nationalism during the Chinese Civil War or the seedy glamor of a dive bar in Paris, and she imbues her characters with haunting melancholy as victims "doomed to the mishaps of verity and the equally hurtful edges of fiction." This author is one to watch. (May)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
This novel in stories illuminates Asian women's resilience across decades of personal, political, and economic upheaval. "Chrysanthemums bloom early in the autumn," the narrator remarks. "Noble flowers in Japan, they flourish under short days and long nights. Their petals bear a resemblance to the sun's rays." Taking place during years ending with six, "a divine number...[which] means a smooth life, a perfect path," the book tells a series of intimate stories spanning the years 1946 to 2016, taking place in Paris, New York, Shanghai, Singapore, and Beijing. Among Sze-Lorrain's exquisitely rendered characters are Madame Chiang Kai-shek's personal cook; a former dancer who, during the Cultural Revolution, must live in a Shanghai apartment building where she witnesses her neighbors routinely depart in coffins; and a Juilliard-trained pianist who is plunged into encounters with her past when, in 1996, a piano is mysteriously delivered to her new apartment in Paris. The women's stories weave together in understated and inventive ways, much like a recurring motif in a musical composition, which comes as no surprise given the author's background as a poet and zheng harpist. Sze-Lorrain excels in the lyrical mode as her attention to sensory observation illustrates how seemingly minor details such as the play of light from a shattered stained-glass window or the geometrically interlocking joints in a table can become microcosmic worlds if one knows how to look. Weaving these details together with an orchestral sensibility, the novel serves as a multilayered meditation on intergenerational trauma, memory, and resilience. Although this novel feels complete, one has the sense that Sze-Lorrain has many more stories to tell. By turns delicate and wild, this novel will linger like a chrysanthemum's fragrance long after the last page. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
