Mimi Lok’s Last of Her Name is a smorgasbord of powerful writing and angsty emotion wrapped into eight meditations on what it means to feel slightly out of place, either in your head or in your physical surroundings ... While not all the stories are equally successful...it’s quite clear Lok is on to something about the human condition ... her empathy for her characters—and discerning grasp of their strained or isolated circumstances—comes through on every page. Her stories are insightful, painfully honest and deeply unsettling—a dynamite combination in a new writer on the scene.

... a beautiful and perceptive look at the connections we make — and fail to make — with family, friends and strangers. Lok's literary debut is among the strongest of the year, thanks to her excellent writing and uncanny ability to create complex characters with the same stubborn flaws as real people ... doesn't feel at all like a debut book; Lok writes with the self-assuredness of a literary veteran and the insight of someone who's spent a lifetime studying how humans interact. It's a gorgeous collection that urges us to do our best to connect with one another — the alternative, as some of Lok's more unfortunate characters demonstrate, is oblivion.

Stories of unintended consequences, people behaving badly, some with cruelty and hatred, others with tough love or curious ways to test the bonds that bind us, come together in a gripping new collection, Last of Her Name. ... The book reflects the work of a young writer with the artistry and training to write beautifully. Lok also seems to have the worldly knowledge and heart to write about people (on a variety of margins), and she makes subtle but surprising arguments about why their stories matter ... These sophisticated and worldly stories are about how close you can come to not wanting to be married...Or how close you can come to not wanting to be yourself and not knowing of a better alternative ... But above all, nearly every piece seems to grapple convincingly with the matter of how we live and why and how easily it could (and maybe should) be different ... These stories are tough, gorgeous and humane. They feel universal and also deeply specific. I loved the brash intelligence, the way this debut collection can be fun, funny and incredibly serious. How many versions of each one of us are there? One hopes Lok will have time to find more.

Lok channels her intimate observation of human relationships into an astute first story collection ... Through eight provocative stories, Lok’s sharp gaze transforms disconnection and longing with compelling results.

Lok has written the kind of understated book you catch yourself thinking about weeks after you finish it. Absorbing and deeply human, these characters...feel more like people you might’ve known than like fictitious renderings of Lok’s imagination. A pleasure to read and mull over for days.

Lok is not interested in providing answers or pat endings. The stories open up, instead, in the way of myth or fairy tale, transcending the story itself ... It is to Lok’s great credit that she can create layered stories in just a few pages ... While the novella and the longer stories are detailed and haunting, the shorter ones work more like good poems, where the ends open up and out, recasting all that has come before. Lovely echoes exist from one story to another, as themes are touched on again and again. These are not stories that have traditional beginnings, middles, and ends, but stories that always ask the reader to feel, think, and consider.

This intelligent debut collection of short stories features Chinese people around the globe struggling to connect with those closest to them. Many of Lok's stories unfold in a series of juxtapositions; it's up to the reader to make connections between the different lives portrayed ... Are disconnection and loneliness inevitable side effects of modern life or of living in diaspora? These stories raise intriguing questions but do not attempt any simple answers. These eight stories highlight the lives of lonely people with empathy.

Lok’s impressive debut spills over with the diasporic voices of women displaced, disconnected, and discarded ... In all her stories, Lok is an expert at peeking into the souls of those who have been displaced or disregarded: through war, neglect, and even lost love. Seemingly simple yet deep in heart, this touching collection is easy to pick up and hard to put down.