April 1, 2021
Spurred by her father's illness, a Chinese Canadian woman explores her family's past. When the unnamed narrator is 3, her family immigrates to Vancouver--she, her mother, and her grandparents. Everyone, that is, except her father, who helps them settle in but then returns to Hong Kong, worried that he won't be able to find a job to support them in a new country. They become an "astronaut family": "It's a term invented by the Hong Kong mass media. A family with an astronaut father--flying here, flying there." In very short, matter-of-fact fragments, the narrator accumulates memories of growing up, adjusting to life in Canada, and handling an often difficult relationship with a father she sees only twice a year. These memories mingle with those of her mother and grandmother, which the narrator begins collecting after her father falls ill from liver disease and the family assembles in Hong Kong. Her mother recalls high school basketball triumphs and, later, the process of caring for the narrator's younger sister, born with a blood tumor; her grandmother relates, with impish humor, a childhood spent reading classical Chinese novels by night amid war ("Sometimes we couldn't turn the lights on after sunset or we would get bombed") and the one time she happened to write an opera. At one point in this nonlinear book, the narrator studies abroad in China during college and learns a spare technique of Chinese ink painting called xieyi. "They left large areas of the paper blank because they felt empty space was as important as form, that absence was as important as presence," she tells us. "So what did they seek to capture instead? The artist's spirit." Debut author Fung seems to be describing her own narrative technique as much as this historical style, and its spareness does occasionally lend the narrative a fittingly agile sense of itinerancy. Largely, though, the details come across as somewhat mundane: They never really cohere into something bigger than their sum, and the characters remain unconvincing collections of attributes. As a result, the ending in particular feels merely sentimental rather than moving. Occasionally touching but ultimately insubstantial.
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Starred review from April 12, 2021
Fung’s moving debut follows an unnamed protagonist whose family immigrated to Vancouver from Hong Kong when she was three, right before the 1997 handover to Chinese rule. Her father, fearing he won’t be able to find a job abroad, stays in Hong Kong—and thus, their “astronaut family,” coined by the Hong Kong media to describe families where the father stays behind for work, is born. The narrator grows up in Vancouver with her mother, grandparents and younger sister, born a year after they immigrated, and develops a complicated relationship with her father, whom she only sees twice a year. The time they do spend together, like when she lives with him during a summer internship in Hong Kong or when he visits her during her semester abroad in Hangzhou, China, is marred by criticism, arguments, and hurt feelings. But when her father develops liver disease, the narrator is suddenly faced with the reality that she and her father may never have the opportunity to fill in the gaps of their relationship. Woven throughout are stories from the narrator’s mother and grandmother, whose tales about their family provide both historical context and levity. The bracing fragments and poignant vignettes come together to make a stunning and evocative whole. Agent: Julia Masnick, Watkins Loomis Agency.
Starred review from July 1, 2021
DEBUT Canadian author Fung's debut novel tells the story of a nameless Chinese family that emigrates from Hong Kong to Canada prior to the territory's 1997 handover to China. The narrator describes growing up with her mother, grandmother, and younger sister and living out the well-worn role of academically proficient good Chinese daughter while confronting her strained relationship with her father, who remained in Hong Kong to support the family. (She sees him only twice a year.) Later, she struggles to bond with her father during a summer internship in Hong Kong and a brief study of Chinese ink painting, but the story truly intensifies when her father is diagnosed with severe liver disease. The consequences make this novel much more than a simple telling of one family's story of immigration and assimilation, with the multigenerational perspectives provided by the narrator's mother and grandmother enlivening the text and helping the narrator better understand her life. VERDICT Reminiscent of Amy Tan's early work but more sparely written, this fluid and deeply touching novel--sprinkled throughout with Chinese onomatopoeia and proverbs--will be appreciated by readers drawn to stories of families, relationships, and identity.--Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA
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Starred review from May 15, 2021
Perhaps what is most noticeable upon opening Fung's elegiac debut is all the white space. Paragraphs, phrases, words, even detached letters float across the pages, undoubtedly an ethereal reflection of lost chances, missing time, stolen opportunities, and spaces impossible to fill. For most of her life, the unnamed narrator has had an "astronaut family" after she, her mother, sister, and grandparents moved to Vancouver just before the British withdrew from Hong Kong in the 1997 handover while her father stayed in Hong Kong to work, flying in and out for annual visits. As an adult, she seldom sees him, their visits remembered for harsh judgments and slamming doors. And then he falls ill, and only then do the two parents and two daughters gather regularly in his hospital rooms, finally together as they could have, should have been. Little by little, love is finally released. While it was always there, the space to acknowledge, exchange, and grow never seemed possible until looming loss ironically allows for open I-love-you's. In between, the narrator fills the empty spaces with what the living are willing to share. Seemingly spare yet undeniably dense with so much unsaid, Fung's polyphonic first novel is a magnificent literary triumph.
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