RaveDrizzle ReviewThanks to the efforts of Tracy K. Smith and Changtai Bi, English-speaking readers can appreciate the richness of Yi Lei’s bilingual collection ... Smith’s poetic translation produced interesting and often unexpected outcomes ... With such a powerful collaboration of poetic talents working on this astonishing collection , Yi Lei’s name cannot help but grow wide like a tree.
James McBride
RaveDrizzle ReviewThe juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy has never been as eloquent as in James McBride’s latest novel ... McBride’s follow up to his National Book Award winning The Good Lord Bird draws on the same wit and humor as the author observes and records the human condition ... McBride’s ability to switch voices and maintain distinct personalities demonstrates his insistence on seeing people and situations from every perspective, while exploring how multilayered human relationships can be ... many of the novel’s other characters get the same treatment and contribute to both the story’s serious and lighthearted moments ... Readers will be entranced by the prose and witty dialogue that shape this narrative. Not unlike ensemble novels such as Julia Phillips’ Disappearing Earth or Donal Ryan’s The Spinning Heart, McBride continues to distinguish himself and his voice while crafting his story in this revitalized style. He is also one of the authors beautifully commentating on the issues in the present by evoking a past, yet familiar, backdrop. Deacon King Kong keeps the laughs fresh with each subsequent rereading, reminding readers that we are all human and our very existence can touch or magnetize our lives even in the smallest ways.
C Pam Zhang
PositiveDrizzle ReviewOn the whole, Zhang seems less intent on contributing to the myth of the American West than on moralizing ... Zhang culls her prose to lean iterations of poetics and scene. Beauty exists where it can be found, intimate and stark. With little more than blocking and dialogue, Zhang deftly captures the tensions of adolescence and of Lucy and Sam’s relationship. There is also justice in Zhang’s sparse writing; in her retelling, we find a reclamation of the power to give and take. It felt right that Zhang would write of a country marred by Manifest Destiny, saving her eloquence for history’s constants: grief, pain, guilt, and despair ... But Zhang’s editorial hand can be overly ambitious. At times I felt pinched, outside the narrative, and hungry ... It wasn’t sensory detail I craved. Such glimpses of the quotidian provide much-needed contrast to passages in which every word, every sentence, functions as metaphor, symbolism, or foreshadowing. So much of Lucy’s conviction in the narrative-present is absolute, making some characters’ behavior startling, rather than realistic. By contrast, Part Three is suffused with doubt and absolutely breathes. Zhang makes space for the narrator’s and readers’ humanity to coexist. Although the entire novel is provoking, Part Three is resonant and a pleasure to reread ... Ultimately, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a poignant reminder of those the West erased and also a reminder that for millions of immigrants, migrants, and their children, the search for self and home continues to this day. Zhang challenges her characters and her readers to conceptualize a want—or a belonging—that comes with no cost to someone or something else.
