RavePortland Book ReviewAlthough the story is an intimate portrait of the Chinese immigrant experience, it manages to become larger than that in scope, appealing to readers of any generation, age, and cultural background as a masterful bildungsroman. Throughout the overarching linear narration, Li deftly moves between spaces (America and China), times (the 1980s and the 1990s, it seems), and perspectives (various members of the three Chinese families featured). The ever-shifting narration creates a sense of disorientation, mimicking the protagonist’s own emotional state as he struggles to adapt to new surroundings and the increasing instability of his family life ... What Li accomplishes, as Lahiri and others have done before, is to put in stark relief the continuing social, emotional, and psychological consequences of the Faustian bargain struck when making the decision to leave one’s country to come to another.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
