This is the kind of historical novel I love – it’s a decades-spanning family saga that builds on the author’s own family history. In this debut novel, Fu tells a story that parallels that of her father, who is born in China during the Japanese War of Aggression in the 1940s and the Chinese Civil…
I wanted to like this book but in the end was disappointed. I was really interested in the story, which begins with a young woman traveling from China to the United States to have a baby. Scarlett is going to a home in the U.S. for pregnant Chinese women, so they can give birth in…
This is a really thoughtful, moving novel about a Chinese family that is torn apart in the United States. Peilan grows up in China in a small village but dreams of exploring the world, so she travels to New York for factory work at better wages. She has Deming while still very young herself, and…
I’ve seen mixed reviews of this book, but I really liked it. Chang gives us a screwed-up family on a road trip, but she makes their story sympathetic, clever and at times funny. I’ve seen this book described as hilarious, and I can’t say it reached that level for me, but then I’m not Chinese so…
This was a powerful book. Somehow it tackles a really emotional subject but doesn’t leave you a weepy, nose-blowing mess. It begins with the disappearance and death of sixteen-year-old Lydia in a 1977 Ohio suburb. Her family struggles to understand what happened to her, and why. Wasn’t she an average, well-adjusted teenager? Lydia is dead.…
The Book Stop 