Chia-Chia Lin
Autor de The Unpassing
Sobre El Autor
Créditos de la imagen: pulled from author website, https://www.chiachialin.com
Obras de Chia-Chia Lin
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Género
- female
- Nacionalidad
- USA
- Lugares de residencia
- Southern California, USA
- Educación
- Iowa Writers' Workshop (MFA in fiction)
Miembros
Reseñas
In this novel, Chia-Chia Lin tells the story of a family coming apart. After emigrating from Taiwan, the family eventually settles in Alaska, where the father works digging wells and installing septic systems, jobs that go dormant during the long winter months. The family struggles financially and the parents' relationship is marked by hostility. Then, one of the four children dies of meningitis and the father is sued by a customer and the fault-lines in the family split open.
The book is told from the point of view of eleven-year-old Gavin, who struggles to fit in at school and who is sinking under the weight of the guilt he feels for having given his sister the disease that killed her. There is no room for his grief and nobody he can talk to about what happened in his family, where everyone is coming apart in different ways.
This is a beautifully told story, where the geography and weather of Alaska are so vividly described. Telling the story from the point of view of a child whose understanding of events is both incomplete and half-understood gives the novel a cloudy feel as Gavin struggles to make sense of the unexplained.… (más)
The book is told from the point of view of eleven-year-old Gavin, who struggles to fit in at school and who is sinking under the weight of the guilt he feels for having given his sister the disease that killed her. There is no room for his grief and nobody he can talk to about what happened in his family, where everyone is coming apart in different ways.
This is a beautifully told story, where the geography and weather of Alaska are so vividly described. Telling the story from the point of view of a child whose understanding of events is both incomplete and half-understood gives the novel a cloudy feel as Gavin struggles to make sense of the unexplained.… (más)
The Unpassing, by Chia-Chia Lin, is an extraordinary story of the disintegration of a Taiwanese family who came to America, choosing Alaska for their immigrant dream. It is narrated by Gavin, a young boy who fell sick and into a coma, waking up a week later to discover his younger sister Ruby had died as well. His school had an outbreak of meningitis. Because as a child, he lacks the words to express his feelings of guilt and his parents are too full of their own grief, anger, and guilt, they have no space to understand their children are also suffering, this book overflows with unexpressed pain.
Gavin’s family is poor, their small and narrow home surrounded by open space and woods. The anticipated development of a neighborhood as unrealized as all the rest of their dreams. Their poverty is exacerbated by a personal injury lawsuit against the father who is accused of a faulty septic tank installation that poisoned a young child. The father feels hopeless to defend himself, “;Once we entered that room, you see, it was over. It was their room, not ours.’ Gripping the wheel now, he shifted and straightened. ‘And when has a room ever been ours?’”
I loved The Unpassing even though it broke my heart time and again.This family was so close, living on top of each other in space and time, with very little relief in the form of outsiders. The kids had a few friends, a relatively affluent white family on the oher side of the woods, but the parents were isolated even from each other. They were, as Lin said in another context, ” too close—so close we couldn’t see each other.”
Lin does a phenomenal job of writing in the language of a ten-year-old without sounding juvenile or false. Gavin thinks deeply and says many profound things in the simple language of childhood. Even when it is clearly adult reflection on childhood, Lin maintains the beautiful language of simplicty. There is deep understanding of grief and alienation in The Unpassing as well as deep compassion for people in despair.
The Unpassing at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux | Macmillan
Chia-Chia Lin author site
★★★★★
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/05/31/9780374279363/… (más)
Gavin’s family is poor, their small and narrow home surrounded by open space and woods. The anticipated development of a neighborhood as unrealized as all the rest of their dreams. Their poverty is exacerbated by a personal injury lawsuit against the father who is accused of a faulty septic tank installation that poisoned a young child. The father feels hopeless to defend himself, “;Once we entered that room, you see, it was over. It was their room, not ours.’ Gripping the wheel now, he shifted and straightened. ‘And when has a room ever been ours?’”
I loved The Unpassing even though it broke my heart time and again.This family was so close, living on top of each other in space and time, with very little relief in the form of outsiders. The kids had a few friends, a relatively affluent white family on the oher side of the woods, but the parents were isolated even from each other. They were, as Lin said in another context, ” too close—so close we couldn’t see each other.”
Lin does a phenomenal job of writing in the language of a ten-year-old without sounding juvenile or false. Gavin thinks deeply and says many profound things in the simple language of childhood. Even when it is clearly adult reflection on childhood, Lin maintains the beautiful language of simplicty. There is deep understanding of grief and alienation in The Unpassing as well as deep compassion for people in despair.
The Unpassing at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux | Macmillan
Chia-Chia Lin author site
★★★★★
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/05/31/9780374279363/… (más)
Premios
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 1
- Miembros
- 148
- Popularidad
- #140,180
- Valoración
- 3.7
- Reseñas
- 4
- ISBNs
- 7
Mainly, this book reads as poetry stitched together to make a novel. I don't mean this in any other way than very good; this book contains prose that glows throughout. This book has made Chia-Chia Lin turn up in my radar for things to come.
The rhythm of the prose is what struck me first, but the story arc is also wondrous yet simple; those two bits combined make me want to go on and on with the text.
The only critique I have is that the book felt a bit gone circa two thirds into it; it felt like its time had come earlier than the book did. I must confess that I read an uncorrected galley copy, so changes may have been made since.
Altogether, I recommend reading this to all who want to read a piece of fiction that feels real.… (más)