RaveThe AV Club... a heartfelt, searching memoir ... Zauner’s storytelling—and recall of her past—is impeccable. Memories are rendered with a rich immediacy, as if bathed in a golden light ... Zauner is also adept at mapping the contradictions in her relationship with, and perception of, her mother ... The healing, connective power of food reverberates in nearly every chapter of this coming-of-age story...long, sensuous descriptions ... though her family experiences moments of love and relief, Zauner wisely does not imbue suffering with a posthumous glow of nobility. Suffering is painful, often defying meaning.
C Pam Zhang
PositiveThe A.V. Club... the setting sprawls, alternating between wonder and fear of the unknown in crackling, atmospheric prose ... Despite some characteristics endemic to Wild West narratives, the world of How Much Of These Hills Is Gold feels wholly original, and Zhang imbues its wide expanse with magical realism ... the fourth and final section feels like an entirely different novel. In the last 30 or so pages, much of the momentum is lost, with characters acting from motivations that don’t comport with what we’ve come to understand about them. The ending is also punishing in a way that feels less poetic than ham-fisted—like a story loop in HBO’s Westworld that’s bound to end in tragedy for the character, despite best intentions ... Notwithstanding the disappointing conclusion, How Much Of These Hills Is Gold is a thrilling and epic debut that elides stereotypes associated with Chinese or Western narratives and which forges its own mythology. Lucy and Sam’s world in the wilderness feels entirely lived in and fully imagined, and reflections on home, gender and sexual identity, and familial duty parallel strong stylistic choices that, even if the ending doesn’t, do genuinely pay off.
