Book review by Dennis D. McDonald 

The events of the story play out against the backdrop of China’s cultural revolution in the late 1950s. A small town man in south China is arrested and taken away to a “reeducation camp” (i.e., forced labor). His crime: he's accused of writing a letter critical of government policy. The irony is that Mao asked the Chinese people to write to him about ways to improve China. When they did he clamped down upon learning that many of the letters he received were critical of him and the ruling communist party. 

Tsukiyama’s story focuses on how the family copes when the father is taken away by the police. In the process we find out much about life in a small town, subsistence living, multi generational households, life on the street, herbalism, and the day to day cares of real people. 

As in her novel The Samurai’s Garden Tsukiyama’s interweaving of sensitively drawn characters with day-to-day domestic and small-town life is flawless. We get to know and care about these people against the backdrop of the changes rippling through Chinese society.  

My only complaint about the novel when compared with The Samurai’s Garden is that there are almost too many characters. Each one could probably be the focus of his or her own novel. While Tsukiyama skillfully describes how they relate to each other, the cumulative affect is to retard progression of the story. Still, this is an excellent novel and provides much human insight into important historical events.           

Review copyright © 2021 by Dennis D. McDonald 

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