Tomb Sweeping probes the loyalties we hold: to relatives, to strangers, and to ourselves. In stories set across the US and Asia, Alexandra Chang immerses us in the lives of immigrant families, grocery store employees, expecting parents, and guileless lab assistants.
Compelling and compulsively readable, Tomb Sweeping reveals that Chang is a writer who’s only just beginning to show readers her impressive range. Subtle wisdom runs rampant through these pages, often cloaked in humor or character quirks or dialogue.
...evinces little in the way of memorable character, emotion or conflict. Though the stories’ thematic concerns with the slipperiness of class in America, particularly as experienced by immigrant communities, are necessary and compelling—characters painfully move up and down the rungs of housing security, education, employment and documentation—the collection mostly fails to convincingly situate these themes within the emotional particulars of each protagonist’s life. Feelings are baldly stated, rather than tendered through illustrative action ... In a book about the bonds between individuals who are trying to balance their own survival with the debts they owe to one another, an excess of dialogue is to be expected; but Chang’s relies too heavily on wooden exclamations ... Though Chang occasionally follows a formal curiosity to interesting effect...conclusions can read as faint and anodyne
Powerful and delightfully strange ... Chang’s distinctive style and wry tone bring her characters to startling life, all the while rendering the pain of their loneliness and desire for stability in stark relief.
