Empire of Glass

by Kaitlin Solimine

Empire of Glass is a grand, experimental epic chronicling the seismic changes in China over the last half century.

In the mid-1990s, an American teenager, named Lao K in Chinese, stands on Coal Hill, a park in Beijing, a loop of rope in her hand. Will she assist her Chinese homestay mother, Li-Ming, who is dying of cancer, in ending her life, or will she choose another path? Twenty years later, Lao K receives a book written by Li-Ming called “Empire of Glass,” a narrative that chronicles the lives of Li-Ming and her husband, Wang, in pre and post-revolutionary China over the last half of the twentieth century. Lao K begins translating the story, which becomes the novel we are reading. But, as translator, how can Lao K separate fact from fiction, and what will her role be in the book’s final chapter?

A grand, experimental epic—Lao K’s story is told in footnotes that run throughout the book—that chronicles the seismic changes in China over the last half century through the lens of one family’s experiences, Empire of Glass is an investigation into the workings of human memory and the veracity of oral history that pushes the boundaries of language and form in stunning and unforgettable ways.

Kaitlin Solimine has been a Fulbright Fellow in China, and has received several scholarships, awards, and residencies for her writing, including the 2012 Dzanc Books/Disquiet International Literary Program award for an earlier draft of Empire of Glass, judged by Colson Whitehead. Her fiction has been published in Guernica, the Kartika Review, and numerous anthologies. Kaitlin is co-founder of HIPPO Reads, a network connecting academic insights and scholars to the wider public. She resides in San Francisco with her husband and daughter, where she is a 2016 SF Grotto Writing Fellow.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, China, Audiobook

304 pages, Paperback

First published June 20, 2017

About the author

Kaitlin Solimine holds a BA from Harvard University and an MA from the University of Southern California, both in East Asian Studies with an emphasis on Chinese language, culture, and history. She studied international relations at Beijing University as a Harvard-Yenching Scholar, wrote and edited the travel series, Let’s Go: China (St. Martin’s Press), and received a Fulbright creative grant to research her forthcoming first novel, Empire of Glass. At the 2010 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, she was the Donald E. Axinn Scholar in Fiction. She received an MFA in writing from UC-San Diego, where she also taught undergraduate writing. An excerpt from Empire of Glass won the 2012 Dzanc Books/Disquiet International Literary Program award, judged by Colson Whitehead. Another excerpt, 'Thoughts of Sinking,' is featured in Kartika Review. She is a Huffington Post contributor and columnist at The World of Chinese Magazine. She co-founded HIPPO Reads, a literary startup focused on curating and delivering high quality, previously published content with an academic bent. After recently living in Singapore, she moved to San Francisco where she was a 2016 SF Grotto Writing Fellow. Empire of Glass, her first novel, was a finalist for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize.

Reviews

[Angela M · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read something different and I thought this would be a good one. It sounded interesting enough. But I found myself in the position of not really being captivated by a book that has a lot of 5 star reviews and has been shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Award. I'm an outlier here for sure, but I have to be honest. There were some things about it that I liked - the lovely prose in places, hidden books, including the novel before us to read which was written by Li-Ming who Lao K's host mother when she was an exchange student in China years before. Lao K translates it for us. The story of Li-Ming and her husband Wang over the years as China changes just didn't engage me. There are different time frames which didn't give this a cohesive feel. There are footnotes which I found distracting. The writing especially in the beginning was the thing that made me round it up. I read many of the five star reviews to try to understand what I might have missed here, not understood , but most of them were short and didn't provide me with much help. I'm looking forward to reading additional reviews, especially if some of my Goodreads friends read this. Maybe a reread will be in order, but for now rounded up to 3 stars.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Ig Publishing through Edelweiss.

[Book Riot Community]

An American teenager, Lao K, faced with a tough decision in China: Should she help her dying Chinese homestay mother, Li-Ming, end her life? Fast-forward twenty years: Lao K receives a package, containing the story of Li-Ming’s life. As Lao K begins translating the book, the story becomes the novel. But what role with Lao K play in Li-Ming’s tale this time around? Pushing the boundaries of the novel form, this is a gorgeous experimental work.
Backlist bump: No other book, just read this one again.


Tune in to our weekly podcast dedicated to all things new books, All The Books: http://bookriot.com/listen/shows/allt...

[Skip · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I seem to be a minority of one since everybody else loves this book. Solimine's East Asian studies seem to shine through, at least with respect to providing a feel for China, its culture, and the mindset of its people. However, there was nothing else I liked about this book. I did not care for the characters, I did not like the story of how her parents found each other despite different backgrounds and a structured social order, and I really hate the use of footnotes in a book of fiction: either something is sufficiently important to wrap into the narrative or it isn't. In this case, it wasn't. Very disappointing.

[Vanessa Hua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning and incisive, EMPIRE OF GLASS will dazzle you with its meditations on history, poetry, love, and family. She masterfully shows the sweep of history, but also takes us intimately into a family. Cross cultures, cross continents, cross genres. You'll be thinking about the book for long time afterward.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a tough one. This actually has the highest average rating of any book I've read on Goodreads, which is a little surprising.

There are a lot of great things going on here. The prose is amazing, the atmosphere and built landscape of China all come through beautifully. I enjoyed the characters (for the most part), and the way that they weaved so well through Chinese history. This was actually the first fiction I've read that involves the Chinese Revolution, and I appreciated learning more.

My challenges all involved the book's structure, and some of them may have been of my own doing -- the two timelines seemed very disjointed, the timeline jumped around more than I would have liked, and it could take a while to figure out what was going on in a new chapter or a new footnote. There were a few editing mistakes as well.

Overall, a good story, and recommended to those with an interest in American fiction about China.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. The writing is beautiful and every word is poetic. Empire of Glass will move and delight you. I learned so much about China from the author's sensitive writing about -- and the narrator's relationship with -- the culture and people depicted in the book. My book group has chosen this book to talk about this summer because there are so many interesting discussion points including cultural, interpersonal, and plot points as well as the book's unusual structure. I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading it again for my book group.

[Niki Shumaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solimine's novel is, in a word, resonating. As others have commented, this novel stays with you for a long time afterwards. She paints a stunning landscape of memory, punctuated by unforgettable images. Her characters are complex and intricate, as only true humans are. She captures how human beings cast both shadows of light and dark, and their stories reveal a part of Chinese history, and history in general, that remains in the American consciousness often misunderstood and obscured by mysticism and stereotyping.

Solimine's voice itself is lyrical and poetic. You feel a part of the flowing, breathing stream of her words. They pull you along, as if by a current, giving the sense of a gentle wave carrying you onwards as you make this journey with her narrator and her characters.

I highly recommend this novel and encourage others to read it.

[Sarah Dibble Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Empire of Glass is a gorgeous and smart debut novel! It drew me in immediately with its compelling frame story, the Translator's Note and corresponding footnotes. It kept me reading with an exciting and layered plot, epic scope, and poetically rendered language. I loved the way it wove together the stories of Baba, Li-Ming, and Lao K through a turbulent time in China's history. I learned so much while being swept along by each beautiful sentence.

[Nathalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The beautiful prose was really what did it for me—this is the most poetic novel I've read in a long time. I kept coming back to let the music of the words wash over me. Some other reviewers seem put off by the extensive footnotes, but I liked them. They reminded me a bit of Kiss of the Spider Woman, which I loved in college. I am probably a bit biased as I know Kate personally, but even if I didn't I would highly recommend! Empire of Glass was a great read.

[Qi Zhai]

A sumptuous work rich with authentic details of life in China, delivered in delicious prose. It has been years since I've had vivid memories of my childhood - "Empire of Glass" brought back familiar sights, sounds, and even smells. I'm impressed with Kaitlin Solimine's keen ability to observe and convey what may seem so foreign to an English audience in such an accessible way.

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful read. Poetic writing that transports you to another time and place. Solimine has a real knack for storytelling. I look forward to reading more from this author.

[Yang Huang · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this prismatic story, I journeyed with a score of fascinating characters through the tumultuous historical events and personal battles. I savored Lao K’s footnotes, as she unearthed Baba’s and Li-Ming’s compelling stories in a visceral cultural context. Her depictions of Beijing and her Chinese family interweave astute observations, youthful passion, and deep humility. Solimine is a masterful storyteller. I eagerly await her next book.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

[Kathleen Solimine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A complex novel in which the reader is transported to a time when China was so fragile, and love and relationships were subject to political decisions, that could determine the outcome.
Past and present intertwine in a story within a story, and footnotes which combine the translator's own story, as it relates to the novel's main characters.
A poetic undertaking by the author, a direct contrast to the upheaval taking place during the Cultural Revolution, in which our characters fall in love.

A book to be read and read again.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Empire of Glass is a masterpiece. The writing is gorgeous, and the story transports you. Fascinating structure with narrator as translator of book-within-book and narrator/translator footnotes as additional storyline. The structure itself is a thought provoking comment on culture and relationships. It's a must read for anyone interested in Chinese culture and history, and I highly recommend it to anyone else who loves great literature!

[Lea Lokman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kaitlin narrates with such a captivating lyrical voice that you feel as if you've been transported to post-revolutionary China. I thoroughly enjoyed the interplaying narratives, told in a really innovative footnote format. Five stars -- Such a delightful read!

[Yi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that must be consumed with time and great care. Pay attention to the way Solimine uses all the tools at her disposal--footnotes, spacing, the two different languages at work, arrangement of time--to bring us closer to the complexities this young translator encounters as she's working through her host mother's memories.
This book is so rich. Don't rush through it. I didn't, and I'm glad for it.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The imagery in this book transports the reader. Anyone who has spent time in a foreign land, and experienced the exhilaration and anxiety of forging relationships in a foreign language and foreign culture, will identify with the feelings expressed in this book. I just found the ambiance to be so accurate to my own feelings/experiences abroad, though the adventure described here is much greater to any I have had.
Anyone who has not traveled will have the opportunity to experience it vicariously. The imagery is so vivid and the emotional tone very rich.
I recommend reading the forward first. It intrigued me immediately.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Empire of Glass has a vulnerable and honest voice that captures a love of stories: the ones we write ourselves and the ones we read. Its plot is engaging and the setting adds another dimension that novels set in the modern Western hemisphere simply do not have. While I did not have a particular interest in China before reading this book, I enjoyed the culture of Beijing that emanates throughout the novel.

[Isham Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

At a time when genre writers are rapidly clearing the field and no novelist who hopes to survive these days dare write a book without a murder or a torrid romance set in the historical past, I applaud the stubborn, heroic and foolhardy who act as if "literary" fiction were still alive when they alone know what the term even means anymore. Or call it "experimental" fiction, that which defies readers' expectations in having no clear beginning, middle and end, in other words a nonlinear narrative. I'm also on the lookout, as a China expat book watcher, for the rare novel which doesn't feature your pensive cheongsam-clad woman on the cover, with her fan or umbrella, too modest to be viewed except obliquely, from over her shoulder. Thus Kaitlin Solimine's oddly designed and titled Empire of Glass caught my attention when it first came out, though it took a while to work its way to the top of my reading list.

Solimine chronicles the history of a Beijing family over the latter half of last century up through the year the author herself lived with the family as a teenage exchange student. The cultural and linguistic hurdles of being thrust alone in a country as foreign as China would be daunting enough for anyone that young, but she bonded closely with her host family and was deeply and positively affected by the experience. The challenge for the author, in retrospect, was how to surmount the claustrophobic constraints of a straightforward first-person narrative by an impressionable sixteen-year old and achieve a more objective distancing, how to shift the focus from herself to her adopted family as they experienced their own reality. The result is a complex, layered narrative with multiple frames and fragmented perspectives, as if the story could only be viewed through intersecting prisms (suggestive of the book's title and cover of shattered glass), at the cost of a more unified vision.

One prism shows us Baba's (the father) mental upheaval as a teenage soldier when thrust into a sexual encounter with a captured American female army nurse just across the Chinese border in the Korean War. Half a century later, when the blond teenage Solimine ("Lao K" in her narrative incarnation) writes herself into the story, she ignites in the now elderly Baba memories of the blond nurse and fresh longings. He is on the verge of assaulting her when he pulls back after a single caress. I was relieved nothing worse happened, but the novelist in me craved a more explosive outcome, a more momentous, grievous event or a primal scene, out of which the narrative could erupt with a more inexorable purpose, than the actual denouement, Li-Ming's (the mama of the family) slow death from cancer, which dominates the final chapters.

What holds these dispersed threads together is a dense, finely woven poetic texture ("Time was words etched into caves. Books hidden under beds"; "I looked to my hands and saw only a broken sun, a damned, irreversible dawn"), which though occasionally overly bejeweled and abstruse, invites a second reading.

[Anna Redmond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very few books undertake as much as Empire of Glass, and even fewer books succeed. This is a gem - not to be missed. Empire of Glass leaves you fuller and richer for the reading. This isn't a tiptoe into the shallow pool of another country and culture, but a head-first plunge. The texture and richness will overtake you, but hopefully not so much that you miss pearls like these, snuck in unceremoniously:
"Of course I would die first. Every story always finds its rightful ending- mine, yours, no different. The ending's always ugly. It's the beginning we cling to for obvious reasons."
and
"His comrades paid him no attention - they'd seen much worse, the breaking of men so tall, so broad-chested, they'd forever be believe the world is split into two types of people: those who've seen and those who haven't."
I read this one in paperback (I usually read on Kindle) and my fingers itched for a highlighter on every other page.
Solimine has a long and celebrated career ahead of her - I can't wait for the next novel.

[Jocelyn Eikenburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Empire of Glass – which spans the Cultural Revolution up to modern times – stands apart from many novels about China for a simple reason: it is presented as a translation by an American named “Lao K”. Lao K herself is one of the actors in the story, a young woman who invariably becomes a part of the narrative she is attempting to illuminate for foreign readers, the epic story of Li-Ming and her husband Wang, filled with love, drama and tragedy.

Moreover, Empire of Glass is stunning for its lyrical prose. Every sentence is beautifully crafted with imagery that captures China in ways that will surprise and delight you (“I witnessed hutong alleyways paved over by four-lane highways, a landscape of construction cranes pocking the horizon with hungry, steel arms”). Anyone who loves literary fiction about China will savor each page and paragraph in Empire of Glass.

[Wendy Huang · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite parts about this novel are the heart-warming relationship between Lao K and Li-Ming, the footnotes, the cubist multi-perspectives, and the language. The past and present, author and translator, history and narrative are colliding in the most satisfying way. The language asserts itself, full of surprises. Even though I grew up in China, I learned so much about China and its history from this book. The authenticity of the atmosphere and the colloquial use of Chinese language make it a rich reading experience. The story will stick with you, especially the inclusion across cultures, and rejections within one’s own culture during the Cultural Revolution. The book is poignant and intelligent. It’s one of the best books I’ve read for a very long time. I will re-read and highly recommend.

[D. Maurice · Rating 4 out of 5]

The characters in Kaitlin Solimine's EMPIRE OF GLASS (EoG) turn routine daily insights into prose that's beautiful in its imagery: rainfall, women and food.

Rainfall becomes "fat gifts from the cloud-pregnant, autumnal heavens." Her description of women "the female scent was more complex, like soil and sky, elements we see everyday, but still don't understand inherently," was spot on, but my absolute favorite food description ever, "Like the Buddha's touch: the boazi was that good" made my mouth water. I don't even know what boazi is, but I can't wait to savor/taste it.

The era historic, the characters rich and real, not stereotypical. I looked forward to beginning and ending each day reading EoG.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although fiction, "Empire of Glass" reads as a memoir. We follow Lao K who receives her mother Li-Ming's memoir with the title of the book. She begins to translate it, and thus, there's a story within a story.

Altogether, it's extremely well written and pulls you in quickly. The writing feels very smooth and flows beautifully. To me, it very much had the feel of a memoir, and I would think people who enjoy the genre would also enjoy this fictional book. It felt very real, and the characters were three dimensional.

Please note that I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway. All opinions are my own.

[Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This could have been separated into separate books: a memoir of a home stay in Beijing as a teen, the home stay mom’s story during the cultural revolution, the home stay father’s war experiences during the Korean War. It’s quite lyrical and there’s plenty of beautiful passages that’s translations of proverbs, poetry, strands of narratives, and letters between the mom and dad. It’s hard to keep track of it all on top of the footnotes that hold bits about the author’s time in the US and her thoughts about China. The writing is exceptional. The descriptions of the setting and details are well written. Hope to see more of her work.

[Veronica Derrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm in awe of the author's ability to weave together so many layered descriptions, as well as her ability to open our hearts to her character's thoughts and struggles. Very Olive Kitteridge or Visit from the Goon Squad. I squirmed uncomfortably during several poignant and/or difficult emotional scenes. The author brought the passages right into my living room where I was reading. Tip: read the footnotes! I ignored them at first, but Kaitlin has woven a third story in them. (I haven't seen that done before). I can't wait to read what she comes out with next!

[Erin Creznic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Empire of Glass is a searing debut, one that cuts at the heart of the challenges of cross-cultural communication and asks important questions of cultural ownership, memory, and translation. As an English teacher, I'd love for my students to spend time analyzing the metaphors used as well as the structural elements of the overarching translator's note and footnotes. I loved the poetic quality of this work and will be excited to read more of Solimine's writing in the future!

[James S · Rating 5 out of 5]

An intimately woven portrait of love and self-discovery in post-revolutionary China. Kaitlin weaves three diverse and intricate narratives into a singular beautiful work of art. She paints such wonderfully vivid landscapes and characters you can almost reach into the page and touch them. A joy to read and experience her writing.

[Linda Yi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a beautiful - uncomfortable - and ultimately dazzling work. As a Chinese American, I felt at home as I read: inhabiting a home that was at once familiar yet surreal. Beautiful, sad, tragic and sublime. Fantastic work.