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The Unpassing
Chia-Chia Lin’s novel The Unpassing is an immigrant family drama that unfolds on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska, in the mid-1980s. Following the death of the youngest child, the family grapples with debilitating grief alongside sparse landscapes, social and cultural isolation and, eventually, financial ruin. Ultimately, the children are forced to confront the self-destructive tendencies of their dreamer father and the legacy of their family’s failed uprooting.
272 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 7, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 346 reviews
December 30, 2019
“Unpassing” is a deeply melancholic tale — where feelings of separation- alienation- grief - guilt - anger - failure - never seems to go away.
Incredible debut...narrated by a 10 year old boy.
Gavin is really an adult now - but tells this tale from
his childhood perspectives, observations, thoughts and feelings.
This book moved my soul in many ways.
Complex themes are explored after the death of the youngest child: ( filled with specific - interesting - details - including other tragic deaths happening in the world at the same time).
However... it was ‘this’ family where our focus always returns to...
a family we care about.
The author explores the children’s grief - in relation to their parents grief....
and the siblings grief in relation to each other....
with varied-ranges-of emotions in her storytelling.
Each family member, with distinctive characteristics- - job responsibilities- childhood distractions - strengths and failures - were grieving in a foreign country - on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska...
a home - that didn’t ‘feel’ like home.
The father:
.... “He had brought us to a place we didn’t belong, and taken from us a place we did”.
The title, “Unpassing”, was interesting to me....
as in ‘un’ settling...in the choice to come to America....
or..
an ‘un’expected death
or...
‘un’able to accept loss, and failures...
or...
‘un’said things...( emotions not expressed)...
“Unpassing” is a gorgeously written debut by Chia-Chia Lin
Deeply felt!!!!
For me....one of the themes that stood out was — how does a ‘parent/parents’ nurture their bereaved children, when they themselves are grieving?
This story…confirms for me ... that it’s not easy!
When I was college,
I once approached my mother.. ( perhaps my mistake... but many years after the death of her husband/ my father)....
and said...”Daddy dying was a major loss for me. I missed growing up without a father”
Her response was:
‘Daddy dying was a lot harder on me than it was you”.
Shut me right up.
But....
Was his death harder on my mom than my sister and I?
Maybe......( not that it’s a competition), but I’m not so sure children are any more resilient to tragedy than adults are.
Little people have creative ways of acting out- and often their voices go unheard...with their needs passed over.
This cautionary tale with themes about immigration, isolation - coming-of-age, and death of a family member...
is one of those books I won’t forget easy...
....not the name of the book, the authors name, *Chia-Chia Lin*, or the content.
Powerful-page turning engrossing - -heartbreaking...with stunning prose!
Incredible debut...narrated by a 10 year old boy.
Gavin is really an adult now - but tells this tale from
his childhood perspectives, observations, thoughts and feelings.
This book moved my soul in many ways.
Complex themes are explored after the death of the youngest child: ( filled with specific - interesting - details - including other tragic deaths happening in the world at the same time).
However... it was ‘this’ family where our focus always returns to...
a family we care about.
The author explores the children’s grief - in relation to their parents grief....
and the siblings grief in relation to each other....
with varied-ranges-of emotions in her storytelling.
Each family member, with distinctive characteristics- - job responsibilities- childhood distractions - strengths and failures - were grieving in a foreign country - on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska...
a home - that didn’t ‘feel’ like home.
The father:
.... “He had brought us to a place we didn’t belong, and taken from us a place we did”.
The title, “Unpassing”, was interesting to me....
as in ‘un’ settling...in the choice to come to America....
or..
an ‘un’expected death
or...
‘un’able to accept loss, and failures...
or...
‘un’said things...( emotions not expressed)...
“Unpassing” is a gorgeously written debut by Chia-Chia Lin
Deeply felt!!!!
For me....one of the themes that stood out was — how does a ‘parent/parents’ nurture their bereaved children, when they themselves are grieving?
This story…confirms for me ... that it’s not easy!
When I was college,
I once approached my mother.. ( perhaps my mistake... but many years after the death of her husband/ my father)....
and said...”Daddy dying was a major loss for me. I missed growing up without a father”
Her response was:
‘Daddy dying was a lot harder on me than it was you”.
Shut me right up.
But....
Was his death harder on my mom than my sister and I?
Maybe......( not that it’s a competition), but I’m not so sure children are any more resilient to tragedy than adults are.
Little people have creative ways of acting out- and often their voices go unheard...with their needs passed over.
This cautionary tale with themes about immigration, isolation - coming-of-age, and death of a family member...
is one of those books I won’t forget easy...
....not the name of the book, the authors name, *Chia-Chia Lin*, or the content.
Powerful-page turning engrossing - -heartbreaking...with stunning prose!
Read
June 17, 2019I am putting this aside at 40%, not because the book is not well written, it is, but because I am not connecting to the story nor the characters. Not A typical plot here, it tAkes some concentration, which I don't seem to have for this story. Many have loved it, and it is getting very good journal reviews, but it's just not for me.
August 12, 2019
3.5 stars
A quiet, compelling novel about a Taiwanese family struggling to survive in Alaska. The novel takes place in the 1980s against other tragedies such as the Challenger explosion; we see this family’s tragedies and resilience through the perspective of ten-year-old Gavin. The Unpassing starts with a heart wrenching death – the passing of Gavin’s three-year-old sister – and the family’s grief over her loss follows them in poignant, understated ways for the rest of the novel. Chia-Chia Len includes a lot of powerful themes in an understated way: the tremendous amount of work it takes to just survive in America as an immigrant family, the burden of masculinity, the way nature can both accompany and isolate. Several interactions between the family members took my breath away with their quiet, powerful emotion, like when Gavin’s father tried to force him to eat, a reflection of his father’s insecurity, how much he wanted his son to survive in an unwelcoming country, and much more.
I struggled to connect with the characters on an emotional level throughout the novel, I think because I wish they each had a little more weight to their characterizations. Not much happens in The Unpassing, which is fine, but I left wanting to care more about the characters, to have felt more attached. Still, a good read I would recommend to those interested in grief, immigration, and unassuming family stories. Also, check out this iconic review from a much-trusted fellow-Goodreads-reviewer-friend-of-mine if you want a more rich take on the book.
A quiet, compelling novel about a Taiwanese family struggling to survive in Alaska. The novel takes place in the 1980s against other tragedies such as the Challenger explosion; we see this family’s tragedies and resilience through the perspective of ten-year-old Gavin. The Unpassing starts with a heart wrenching death – the passing of Gavin’s three-year-old sister – and the family’s grief over her loss follows them in poignant, understated ways for the rest of the novel. Chia-Chia Len includes a lot of powerful themes in an understated way: the tremendous amount of work it takes to just survive in America as an immigrant family, the burden of masculinity, the way nature can both accompany and isolate. Several interactions between the family members took my breath away with their quiet, powerful emotion, like when Gavin’s father tried to force him to eat, a reflection of his father’s insecurity, how much he wanted his son to survive in an unwelcoming country, and much more.
I struggled to connect with the characters on an emotional level throughout the novel, I think because I wish they each had a little more weight to their characterizations. Not much happens in The Unpassing, which is fine, but I left wanting to care more about the characters, to have felt more attached. Still, a good read I would recommend to those interested in grief, immigration, and unassuming family stories. Also, check out this iconic review from a much-trusted fellow-Goodreads-reviewer-friend-of-mine if you want a more rich take on the book.
December 5, 2019
This gorgeously written novel is about, at least partly, the complicated grief of children, magnified as it is by their limited understanding of the social mechanics of death and (all too often) by the failure of adults to help them through the darkness of loss. Adults of course have their own loss to contend with. But it's delightful to me to see more and more texts highlight how childhood is not a happy and carefree space, and how the tender, fragile feelings of children need as much or more attention as/than the delicate, fragile feelings of the adults who care for them. Nothing is as easy for kids as we pretend it is.
The first person narrator of this novel is eight when his beloved toddler sister dies. The little girl looms large in the young narrator's memory. She was everyone's joy and light. The three remaining siblings muddle through the aftermath of the child's death, creating ways to cope while the parents also fall apart.
If this is the premise, the novel is immensely more complex (isn't death always more complex than itself?). The narrator's family has recently immigrated from Taiwan and lives in a desultory part of suburban/rural Alaska. The children are fairly integrated with their peers, but the parents struggle with the stark professional demotion that tends to accompany urgent immigration, with cultural displacement, with poverty, and with their inability to function in a country that is not welcoming to them in any way at all.
This is all presented in a very understated, subtle way, so that it takes a bit to figure out what is going on. While the narrator is now an adult, he presents the events of his childhood as seen through his child eyes.
What struck me the most in this book is the brutality of global notions of masculinity. Much is expected from the father in this new land, but the father is not a strong man. Under the weight of the family's expectation and the multiple failures he inevitably encounters, he folds in on himself. There are no second chances for men who let their families down. Gentle, fragile masculinity doesn't have much of a place anywhere, but it really won't be forgiven at the harsh frontiers of immigration.
The final, spectacular chapters do tremendous work to bring home the hurt that inevitably follows childhood trauma. This novel is particularly urgent in this time of hatred toward immigrants of all stripes, and in particular about immigrant children. We are creating a generation of traumatized humans who will take way more than their own lifetimes to heal. Let's heed.
The first person narrator of this novel is eight when his beloved toddler sister dies. The little girl looms large in the young narrator's memory. She was everyone's joy and light. The three remaining siblings muddle through the aftermath of the child's death, creating ways to cope while the parents also fall apart.
If this is the premise, the novel is immensely more complex (isn't death always more complex than itself?). The narrator's family has recently immigrated from Taiwan and lives in a desultory part of suburban/rural Alaska. The children are fairly integrated with their peers, but the parents struggle with the stark professional demotion that tends to accompany urgent immigration, with cultural displacement, with poverty, and with their inability to function in a country that is not welcoming to them in any way at all.
This is all presented in a very understated, subtle way, so that it takes a bit to figure out what is going on. While the narrator is now an adult, he presents the events of his childhood as seen through his child eyes.
What struck me the most in this book is the brutality of global notions of masculinity. Much is expected from the father in this new land, but the father is not a strong man. Under the weight of the family's expectation and the multiple failures he inevitably encounters, he folds in on himself. There are no second chances for men who let their families down. Gentle, fragile masculinity doesn't have much of a place anywhere, but it really won't be forgiven at the harsh frontiers of immigration.
The final, spectacular chapters do tremendous work to bring home the hurt that inevitably follows childhood trauma. This novel is particularly urgent in this time of hatred toward immigrants of all stripes, and in particular about immigrant children. We are creating a generation of traumatized humans who will take way more than their own lifetimes to heal. Let's heed.
May 7, 2019
The Unpassing is an accomplished, character-driven drama following the trials and tribulations of a Taiwanese-American immigrant family residing in 1980s Anchorage, Alaska. Told from the perspective of young Gavin, the ten-year-old son, this gives a very innocent, original point of view that we are not used to seeing in books, so that was most refreshing. The characters are beautifully rendered and come live on the page; they almost feel real with all of their flaws. The vast expansive landscape of Alaska brings an underlying tension to the entire of the narrative. It's poignant, moving and explores family, grief, loss, love, identity and the sense of belonging we all crave.
Lin writes in such a profound manner that touches you and has a subtle emotive authenticity to it. There is often an underrated beauty to simple tales such as these that just works; there's no airs and graces just the stripped back plot exploring the heartbreak and pain of a horrific incident on a family who are rightly devastated. Haunting, evocative and so very believable, this is a debut worth reading and an author worth watching. If you enjoy thought-provoking, slow burn novels with subtle nuances and wonderfully lyrical prose then this is well worth your time. Many thanks to Farrar, Straus & Giroux for an ARC.
Lin writes in such a profound manner that touches you and has a subtle emotive authenticity to it. There is often an underrated beauty to simple tales such as these that just works; there's no airs and graces just the stripped back plot exploring the heartbreak and pain of a horrific incident on a family who are rightly devastated. Haunting, evocative and so very believable, this is a debut worth reading and an author worth watching. If you enjoy thought-provoking, slow burn novels with subtle nuances and wonderfully lyrical prose then this is well worth your time. Many thanks to Farrar, Straus & Giroux for an ARC.
June 10, 2019
The Unpassing straddles many familiar genres – a coming of age story, an immigrant displacement saga, a grief odyssey, an American dream-gone-wrong tale. But the novel’s true journey is straight to the human heart and what survives when people disappear without our full awareness or our permission.
Our first-person narrator, Gavin, is a child when he contracts meningitis in school, right before the Challenger space shuttle is set to take off. When he awakes, he finds out that the shuttle has exploded and that his youngest sister Ruby has died, probably because he brought the virus into the house. Her death shatters the already vulnerable landscape of his Taiwanese parents who have relocated to the starkly beautiful but unforgiving state of Alaska.
Chia-Chia Lin writes many scenes that are haunting: Gavin and his mother coming across an impossible-to-conceive setting of a beached beluga whale. (“It looked too big to die, too big to vanish during a sudden, silent creak of the world. And what I thought, had they done with Ruby’s body?”) There are flying squirrels that take over the attic and eventually die en masse outdoors. And there’s the younger brother, Natty, who insists that his parents have disappeared, too, and have morphed into other people and the older sister, Pei-Pei, a teenager who, outside the home, is known as Paige.
There are many subtle questions here about the American Dream gone awry: a mom foraging for food on the road, the children’s embarrassment and dread of outsiders knowing they have little furniture or food, and even the realization that not all of us can afford police or hospital support in times of extreme need. Nothing is under one’s control – even the landscape outside, which can quickly shift from peaceful to threatening in the flash of an eye.
It’s a bleak book but then again, life isn’t always a fairy tale, particularly for those who are acting out their own tragedies in a land that is not quite yet home. 4.5 stars, rounded up.
Our first-person narrator, Gavin, is a child when he contracts meningitis in school, right before the Challenger space shuttle is set to take off. When he awakes, he finds out that the shuttle has exploded and that his youngest sister Ruby has died, probably because he brought the virus into the house. Her death shatters the already vulnerable landscape of his Taiwanese parents who have relocated to the starkly beautiful but unforgiving state of Alaska.
Chia-Chia Lin writes many scenes that are haunting: Gavin and his mother coming across an impossible-to-conceive setting of a beached beluga whale. (“It looked too big to die, too big to vanish during a sudden, silent creak of the world. And what I thought, had they done with Ruby’s body?”) There are flying squirrels that take over the attic and eventually die en masse outdoors. And there’s the younger brother, Natty, who insists that his parents have disappeared, too, and have morphed into other people and the older sister, Pei-Pei, a teenager who, outside the home, is known as Paige.
There are many subtle questions here about the American Dream gone awry: a mom foraging for food on the road, the children’s embarrassment and dread of outsiders knowing they have little furniture or food, and even the realization that not all of us can afford police or hospital support in times of extreme need. Nothing is under one’s control – even the landscape outside, which can quickly shift from peaceful to threatening in the flash of an eye.
It’s a bleak book but then again, life isn’t always a fairy tale, particularly for those who are acting out their own tragedies in a land that is not quite yet home. 4.5 stars, rounded up.
June 5, 2020
The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin explores the challenges of assimilation experienced by a Taiwanese immigrant family of six in Alaska. Set against Alaska’s beautiful but stark landscape and its unforgiving climate, the family struggles to adjust to life an unfamiliar country while dealing with personal grief.
The story unfolds through the first-person voice of Gavin, the eldest boy in the family. It flashes back to 1986 when the family experienced a terrible tragedy. Gavin was ten years old at the time. He wakes from a week-long coma after contracting meningitis to learn his three-year-old sister, Ruby, died from the virus.
Rather than openly grieving and sharing their loss, each family member reacts to the trauma by withdrawing emotionally. Their failure to discuss Ruby’s death prevents them from healing. Gavin’s profound guilt at infecting his sister permeates his perceptions through the rest of the novel as Ruby is never far from his mind. The mother, a strict, harsh, abrasive, and distant matriarch, is prone to erratic behavior and fits of verbal lashings. The father, riddled with grief at the death of his daughter, tries to do what is best for his family, but he is fragile and not up to the task. Gavin’s older sister, Pei-Pei, is headstrong and determined to go her own way. Five-year old Natty, the sibling closest to Ruby in age, cannot comprehend her loss. He worries she may be lost in the woods and insists they look for her.
Compounding the family’s grief is their poverty and alienation at being in an unfamiliar country. Gavin inherits his parents’ distrust of outsiders, including medical personnel and police. He feels his “otherness” in school because of the way he looks, dresses, and the food he eats. His life at home is fraught with an underlying tension ready to surface at any moment. His mother seethes with resentment at his father, constantly reminding him of his failures and inadequacies.
Gavin struggles to find a secure foothold, to make sense of what is happening as he watches his family slowly unravel before his eyes. His narrative unfolds in a series of half-understood, murky events peppered with snatches of his parents’ conversations. The absence of a cohesive plot reinforces his sense of bewilderment. The structure is episodic in nature. By the time Gavin is able to piece together what happened to Ruby, his parents have separated. As an adult, Gavin visits his extended family in Taiwan. But, here, too, he is an outsider. His feelings of alienation and separation haunt him wherever he goes. He recognizes he will “un-pass” for the rest of his life.
Told in spare, haunting prose, this is a complex, understated novel that intertwines several themes: the challenges facing a first-generation immigrant family; coping with the traumatic loss of a child; suppressed grief; isolation; alienation; poverty; the struggle to survive; detachment as a coping mechanism; a coming-of-age story; the failure of adequate parenting; the search for identity; the pain of childhood trauma; and the long-lasting legacy of outsider status.
A compelling novel exploring challenging and difficult themes. Highly recommended.
My book reviews are also available at www.tamaraaghajaffar.com
The story unfolds through the first-person voice of Gavin, the eldest boy in the family. It flashes back to 1986 when the family experienced a terrible tragedy. Gavin was ten years old at the time. He wakes from a week-long coma after contracting meningitis to learn his three-year-old sister, Ruby, died from the virus.
Rather than openly grieving and sharing their loss, each family member reacts to the trauma by withdrawing emotionally. Their failure to discuss Ruby’s death prevents them from healing. Gavin’s profound guilt at infecting his sister permeates his perceptions through the rest of the novel as Ruby is never far from his mind. The mother, a strict, harsh, abrasive, and distant matriarch, is prone to erratic behavior and fits of verbal lashings. The father, riddled with grief at the death of his daughter, tries to do what is best for his family, but he is fragile and not up to the task. Gavin’s older sister, Pei-Pei, is headstrong and determined to go her own way. Five-year old Natty, the sibling closest to Ruby in age, cannot comprehend her loss. He worries she may be lost in the woods and insists they look for her.
Compounding the family’s grief is their poverty and alienation at being in an unfamiliar country. Gavin inherits his parents’ distrust of outsiders, including medical personnel and police. He feels his “otherness” in school because of the way he looks, dresses, and the food he eats. His life at home is fraught with an underlying tension ready to surface at any moment. His mother seethes with resentment at his father, constantly reminding him of his failures and inadequacies.
Gavin struggles to find a secure foothold, to make sense of what is happening as he watches his family slowly unravel before his eyes. His narrative unfolds in a series of half-understood, murky events peppered with snatches of his parents’ conversations. The absence of a cohesive plot reinforces his sense of bewilderment. The structure is episodic in nature. By the time Gavin is able to piece together what happened to Ruby, his parents have separated. As an adult, Gavin visits his extended family in Taiwan. But, here, too, he is an outsider. His feelings of alienation and separation haunt him wherever he goes. He recognizes he will “un-pass” for the rest of his life.
Told in spare, haunting prose, this is a complex, understated novel that intertwines several themes: the challenges facing a first-generation immigrant family; coping with the traumatic loss of a child; suppressed grief; isolation; alienation; poverty; the struggle to survive; detachment as a coping mechanism; a coming-of-age story; the failure of adequate parenting; the search for identity; the pain of childhood trauma; and the long-lasting legacy of outsider status.
A compelling novel exploring challenging and difficult themes. Highly recommended.
My book reviews are also available at www.tamaraaghajaffar.com
January 13, 2020
“It was a kind of violence, what my father had done. He had brought us to a place we didn’t belong, and taken us from a place we did. Now we yearned for all places and found peace in none.”
Lin’s story explores the effect of geographic location on the strength of a family. In this case, a Taiwanese family settles in a ramshackle house in Southcentral Alaska. Lin weaves the Challenger disaster story throughout the narrative. The first tragedy coincides with Christa McAuliffe’s demise on the Challenger in 1986. The day of the launch, Gavin, the son comes home sick and nearly dies from meningitis. The family loses their young daughter Ruby to meningitis. Things never improve.
There’s a general feeling of the family’s failure to thrive. The father is upset the son doesn’t grow. “Ringing in my head was the voice of my father: ‘You need to eat more. Do you understand what I’m saying?’” Plants and vegetables don’t grow. “What have they been doing all this time instead of growing?” “It’s this place, my mother said. It’s not a place that allows them to grow the way they ought.” Lin drives home the barrenness of the landscape and how that contributes to the family’s weakness.
On top of the tragedies that befall the family, there is an undercurrent of racism. “No, you listen to me. They don’t understand us. My father’s voice swelled. They see only half of us. You know what they’ll say? That it’s our fault. It’s all our fault.” The insidious racism in the community contributes to the family’s isolation both internally and in the community.
The ending is only slightly more upbeat. Essentially, the son realizes that no matter where they go, they don’t fit in. “But sometimes I felt uneasy. What were we doing there? The feeling persisted through my life, no matter where I went.” Gavin wants to move back to Taiwan. It made me wonder if immigrants with memories of where they used to live have a harder time assimilating into the US as opposed to say children of immigrants.
The story is told from Gavin’s perspective in the first person, past tense. This style enhances the emotional tug of the novel since we can get deep inside Gavin’s head. But I would have liked to learn more about the mother. From the beginning, we learn that moving to Alaska has changed her. She ruminates with Gavin. “It’s possible to be someone else, she said. I used to be.” It’s clear she misses that other person and wants part of her back. But we don’t really get a glimpse of who she was and who she wants to be.
The prose is beautiful though maudlin. The story really makes me wonder how much living in a certain state determines a family’s happiness and ability to grow together. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more books from Lin.
Lin’s story explores the effect of geographic location on the strength of a family. In this case, a Taiwanese family settles in a ramshackle house in Southcentral Alaska. Lin weaves the Challenger disaster story throughout the narrative. The first tragedy coincides with Christa McAuliffe’s demise on the Challenger in 1986. The day of the launch, Gavin, the son comes home sick and nearly dies from meningitis. The family loses their young daughter Ruby to meningitis. Things never improve.
There’s a general feeling of the family’s failure to thrive. The father is upset the son doesn’t grow. “Ringing in my head was the voice of my father: ‘You need to eat more. Do you understand what I’m saying?’” Plants and vegetables don’t grow. “What have they been doing all this time instead of growing?” “It’s this place, my mother said. It’s not a place that allows them to grow the way they ought.” Lin drives home the barrenness of the landscape and how that contributes to the family’s weakness.
On top of the tragedies that befall the family, there is an undercurrent of racism. “No, you listen to me. They don’t understand us. My father’s voice swelled. They see only half of us. You know what they’ll say? That it’s our fault. It’s all our fault.” The insidious racism in the community contributes to the family’s isolation both internally and in the community.
The ending is only slightly more upbeat. Essentially, the son realizes that no matter where they go, they don’t fit in. “But sometimes I felt uneasy. What were we doing there? The feeling persisted through my life, no matter where I went.” Gavin wants to move back to Taiwan. It made me wonder if immigrants with memories of where they used to live have a harder time assimilating into the US as opposed to say children of immigrants.
The story is told from Gavin’s perspective in the first person, past tense. This style enhances the emotional tug of the novel since we can get deep inside Gavin’s head. But I would have liked to learn more about the mother. From the beginning, we learn that moving to Alaska has changed her. She ruminates with Gavin. “It’s possible to be someone else, she said. I used to be.” It’s clear she misses that other person and wants part of her back. But we don’t really get a glimpse of who she was and who she wants to be.
The prose is beautiful though maudlin. The story really makes me wonder how much living in a certain state determines a family’s happiness and ability to grow together. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more books from Lin.
December 13, 2019
Chia-Chia Lin tells the story of a family coming apart. After emigrating from Taiwan, the family eventually settles in Alaska, where the father works digging wells and installing septic systems, jobs that go dormant during the long winter months. The family struggles financially and the parents' relationship is marked by hostility. Then, one of the four children dies of meningitis and the father is sued by a customer and the fault-lines in the family split open.
The book is told from the point of view of eleven-year-old Gavin, who struggles to fit in at school and who is sinking under the weight of the guilt he feels for having given his sister the disease that killed her. There is no room for his grief and nobody he can talk to about what happened in his family, where everyone is coming apart in different ways.
This is a beautifully told story, where the geography and weather of Alaska are so vividly described. Telling the story from the point of view of a child whose understanding of events is both incomplete and half-understood gives the novel a cloudy feel as Gavin struggles to make sense of the unexplained.
The book is told from the point of view of eleven-year-old Gavin, who struggles to fit in at school and who is sinking under the weight of the guilt he feels for having given his sister the disease that killed her. There is no room for his grief and nobody he can talk to about what happened in his family, where everyone is coming apart in different ways.
This is a beautifully told story, where the geography and weather of Alaska are so vividly described. Telling the story from the point of view of a child whose understanding of events is both incomplete and half-understood gives the novel a cloudy feel as Gavin struggles to make sense of the unexplained.
December 28, 2019
Bleak yet beautiful in the vein of David Vann’s work: the story of a Taiwanese immigrant family in Alaska and the bad luck and poor choices that nearly destroy them. This debut novel is full of atmosphere and the lowering forces of weather and fate.
May 2, 2019
“ It was a kind of violence, what my father had done. He had brought us to a place we didn’t belong, and taken us from a place we did. Now we yearned for all places and found peace in none”
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“The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin is a slow burn of a novel that engulfs you more in the atmospheric landscape and the characters lives more so than inviting you into the plot. This book is extremely character drive, its Knausgaard esque with its bold and heavily detailed description of the Alaskan wilderness that surrounds the people within. The five main characters are strongly built throughout the pages with such desire that you almost forget that there really isn’t a huge strong plot, it takes a backseat in this one, and for me that was absolutely perfect and refreshing but for some I can see they might not enjoy that.
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The Unpassing takes place in the 80’s and centers around a Taiwanese immigrant family of six which very quickly is reduced to five when the narrator, ten year old Gavin, contracts meningitis from an outbreak at school. He wakes a week later from a coma to find out he is alright but his youngest sister Ruby also contracted the disease from him and didn’t survive. The entirety of the novel follows the mother and father whom come from different asian countries and never feel at home in America, their struggles being in a foreign land and also the strain on their marriage and happiness. Then there is Gavin and his older sister Pei-Pei and his younger brother Natty, none of them are super close as most siblings that age aren’t but they also aren’t exactly rivals. They too feel the weight of not belonging in a country that is not their own. The novel follows the entire family and how they each react and live after the death of the youngest, navigating through the beautiful canyons of the wilderness and the ugly despair within the very depths of their souls this book hit me harder the farther into it I got. Halfway through I had it being a three star novel but pressed on and was rewarded with a stunning five star depiction of a beautiful story and stunning surprise behind Ruby’s death.
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“The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin is a slow burn of a novel that engulfs you more in the atmospheric landscape and the characters lives more so than inviting you into the plot. This book is extremely character drive, its Knausgaard esque with its bold and heavily detailed description of the Alaskan wilderness that surrounds the people within. The five main characters are strongly built throughout the pages with such desire that you almost forget that there really isn’t a huge strong plot, it takes a backseat in this one, and for me that was absolutely perfect and refreshing but for some I can see they might not enjoy that.
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The Unpassing takes place in the 80’s and centers around a Taiwanese immigrant family of six which very quickly is reduced to five when the narrator, ten year old Gavin, contracts meningitis from an outbreak at school. He wakes a week later from a coma to find out he is alright but his youngest sister Ruby also contracted the disease from him and didn’t survive. The entirety of the novel follows the mother and father whom come from different asian countries and never feel at home in America, their struggles being in a foreign land and also the strain on their marriage and happiness. Then there is Gavin and his older sister Pei-Pei and his younger brother Natty, none of them are super close as most siblings that age aren’t but they also aren’t exactly rivals. They too feel the weight of not belonging in a country that is not their own. The novel follows the entire family and how they each react and live after the death of the youngest, navigating through the beautiful canyons of the wilderness and the ugly despair within the very depths of their souls this book hit me harder the farther into it I got. Halfway through I had it being a three star novel but pressed on and was rewarded with a stunning five star depiction of a beautiful story and stunning surprise behind Ruby’s death.
May 25, 2019
This was one of my anticipated reads. I couldn’t have been more dissatisfied.
I could not, for the life of me, form any connection with the characters. I just felt nothing.
Complete indifference.
I could not, for the life of me, form any connection with the characters. I just felt nothing.
Complete indifference.
November 7, 2021
oh this is just so much
Rep: Taiwanese mcs
Rep: Taiwanese mcs
October 23, 2019
Like some other readers, I just can't connect to the characters in the book. I can't care enough to finish. Decent writing. And usually I'm into quietness and understatement, but I just don't think the author is skilled enough to both be quiet and compelling. Gave up on the book about three-quarters of the way through.
February 3, 2021
I absolutely adored this. This was such a little nugget of gold looking at the life of a Taiwanese family living in Alaska, with the aftermath of losing one of the members to illness.
All the characters were fairly complex, and sometimes it was difficult to connect completely with them, but they were also so unique that I couldn’t help loving them.
I found it fascinating noticing the customs that the family had brought over, coupled with them trying to live with not a lot of money coming in, mixed with moments of beauty as they children would escape to the woods next to their house. The description of nature is really captivating.
All the characters were fairly complex, and sometimes it was difficult to connect completely with them, but they were also so unique that I couldn’t help loving them.
I found it fascinating noticing the customs that the family had brought over, coupled with them trying to live with not a lot of money coming in, mixed with moments of beauty as they children would escape to the woods next to their house. The description of nature is really captivating.
April 27, 2019
This debut novel is the story of an immigrant family from Taiwan living in Alaska. Focused on the aftermath of the unexpected death of the youngest daughter, this is a tale that meditates on themes of life and the weight of loss, identity and finding one’s “place,” family and culture.
Lin’s prose is spare, beautiful, and haunting. Losing a child is the worst pain that I can imagine and she convincingly weaves a depth of emotion throughout each chapter. The lush landscape of the Alaskan wilderness also works as a sharp contrast to the emptiness that the family feels. This novel drew to mind for me We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates, as both examine the everyday reality and aftermath of a horrific event, the effects on a family, and how it irreparably changes them. The story feels so real, narrating every-day moments, and this simplicity causes the events to carry an added weight.
This isn’t a book for everyone, in my opinion. It is strongly character-driven and if you are looking for a story with a quick plot, you will not find it here. However, I was immersed in the pain of this family from the start and my heart ached for them through the entire novel. There may also be a temptation to speed through this book, as it is, on the surface, an easy read. I strongly recommend against this. Take your time, absorb the simple and beautiful language, give yourself ample opportunity to feel the underlying emotion. The writing is worth it.
Sincere thanks to NetGalley and FSG Books for the free e-arc in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are mine. The Unpassing will be released on May 7th.
Lin’s prose is spare, beautiful, and haunting. Losing a child is the worst pain that I can imagine and she convincingly weaves a depth of emotion throughout each chapter. The lush landscape of the Alaskan wilderness also works as a sharp contrast to the emptiness that the family feels. This novel drew to mind for me We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates, as both examine the everyday reality and aftermath of a horrific event, the effects on a family, and how it irreparably changes them. The story feels so real, narrating every-day moments, and this simplicity causes the events to carry an added weight.
This isn’t a book for everyone, in my opinion. It is strongly character-driven and if you are looking for a story with a quick plot, you will not find it here. However, I was immersed in the pain of this family from the start and my heart ached for them through the entire novel. There may also be a temptation to speed through this book, as it is, on the surface, an easy read. I strongly recommend against this. Take your time, absorb the simple and beautiful language, give yourself ample opportunity to feel the underlying emotion. The writing is worth it.
Sincere thanks to NetGalley and FSG Books for the free e-arc in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are mine. The Unpassing will be released on May 7th.
September 4, 2019
Originally posted on The Nerd Daily | Review by Beth Mowbray
Imagine that you fall ill, awakening later to find that days have passed and your world, your family, has changed forever. Irreparably. This is the situation in which ten-year-old Gavin finds himself at the opening of Chia-Chia Lin’s The Unpassing. Feeling unwell one day upon returning home from school, Gavin lays down to rest. The next thing he knows, he wakes up to learn that he contracted meningitis. A week ago. So did his youngest sister, Ruby. And while Gavin was fighting for his life, Ruby slipped away.
The narrative that unfolds from here is beautifully written and heart-wrenching, understated and captivating. Focused on the aftermath of Ruby’s unexpected death, the story follows this family of immigrants from Taiwan, now living in Alaska, and explores the profound effects of their loss. Individually and collectively the family struggles with living in a community that they do not feel is their own, a country that has not brought them the good fortune that they dreamed about, while simultaneously fighting to make it through each painful day without Ruby. The context within which this loss occurs also amplifies the story. Set in the 1980s, there is the unique counterpoint of another horrific event with the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, which occurs during the same week as Ruby’s death. The lush landscape of the Alaskan wilderness, vividly described throughout the book, also works as a sharp contrast to the emptiness that the family feels.
The Unpassing is a tale that meditates on themes of life and the weight of grief, identity and finding one’s place, family and culture. The prose in this novel is spare and haunting. Losing a child is the most terrifying, painful experience that any parent could imagine and Lin convincingly weaves a depth of emotion throughout each chapter. Little background is given about the family before this catastrophic event, which emphasises how the loss of Ruby defines them all, overshadowing their previous lives. Lin also skilfully embeds small details – a tree in the home which goes unwatered, trash piling up without being removed – which help convey the family’s grief, painting a picture of how their lives change day by day.
This novel drew to mind We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates, as both works examine the everyday reality and aftermath of a shocking event, the effects on a family, and how it changes them in ways both great and small. The story feels so real, narrating the every-day moments and experiences of the characters in a subtle way that causes the events to actually carry an added weight. The Unpassing is a strongly character-driven work and if you are looking for a story with a quick plot, you will not find it here. However, as a reader you will be immersed in the pain of this family from the start and your heart will ache for them long after you have closed the book. There may be a temptation to speed through this novel, as it appears, on the surface, to be an easy read. I strongly recommend against this. Take your time, absorb the simple and beautiful language, give yourself ample opportunity to feel the underlying emotion. Lin’s writing is worth the extra time and attention.
My sincere thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advance electronic copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are mine.
Chia-Chia Lin is a graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received an MFA in Fiction and was awarded with the Henfield Prize. Her short stories have been featured in The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, and other journals. The Unpassing is Lin’s first novel and it has been heralded by the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Southern Living, and Literary Hub, among others, as one of the most anticipated books of 2019.
Imagine that you fall ill, awakening later to find that days have passed and your world, your family, has changed forever. Irreparably. This is the situation in which ten-year-old Gavin finds himself at the opening of Chia-Chia Lin’s The Unpassing. Feeling unwell one day upon returning home from school, Gavin lays down to rest. The next thing he knows, he wakes up to learn that he contracted meningitis. A week ago. So did his youngest sister, Ruby. And while Gavin was fighting for his life, Ruby slipped away.
The narrative that unfolds from here is beautifully written and heart-wrenching, understated and captivating. Focused on the aftermath of Ruby’s unexpected death, the story follows this family of immigrants from Taiwan, now living in Alaska, and explores the profound effects of their loss. Individually and collectively the family struggles with living in a community that they do not feel is their own, a country that has not brought them the good fortune that they dreamed about, while simultaneously fighting to make it through each painful day without Ruby. The context within which this loss occurs also amplifies the story. Set in the 1980s, there is the unique counterpoint of another horrific event with the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, which occurs during the same week as Ruby’s death. The lush landscape of the Alaskan wilderness, vividly described throughout the book, also works as a sharp contrast to the emptiness that the family feels.
The Unpassing is a tale that meditates on themes of life and the weight of grief, identity and finding one’s place, family and culture. The prose in this novel is spare and haunting. Losing a child is the most terrifying, painful experience that any parent could imagine and Lin convincingly weaves a depth of emotion throughout each chapter. Little background is given about the family before this catastrophic event, which emphasises how the loss of Ruby defines them all, overshadowing their previous lives. Lin also skilfully embeds small details – a tree in the home which goes unwatered, trash piling up without being removed – which help convey the family’s grief, painting a picture of how their lives change day by day.
This novel drew to mind We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates, as both works examine the everyday reality and aftermath of a shocking event, the effects on a family, and how it changes them in ways both great and small. The story feels so real, narrating the every-day moments and experiences of the characters in a subtle way that causes the events to actually carry an added weight. The Unpassing is a strongly character-driven work and if you are looking for a story with a quick plot, you will not find it here. However, as a reader you will be immersed in the pain of this family from the start and your heart will ache for them long after you have closed the book. There may be a temptation to speed through this novel, as it appears, on the surface, to be an easy read. I strongly recommend against this. Take your time, absorb the simple and beautiful language, give yourself ample opportunity to feel the underlying emotion. Lin’s writing is worth the extra time and attention.
My sincere thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advance electronic copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are mine.
Chia-Chia Lin is a graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received an MFA in Fiction and was awarded with the Henfield Prize. Her short stories have been featured in The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, and other journals. The Unpassing is Lin’s first novel and it has been heralded by the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Southern Living, and Literary Hub, among others, as one of the most anticipated books of 2019.
July 4, 2019
This is a sad, nicely written debut that adds to the understanding of the psychological dislocation that can be part of the immigrant experience. Here, a Taiwanese family living in Alaska struggles to cope in the year after the youngest child dies of meningitis. The tone is chilly and choice of the brother, who is 10/11 during that time, as the POV character limits the amount of interiority we get, so it was a good but not completely satisfying reading experience. Definitely avoid if you’re troubled by children in jeopardy.
May 9, 2019
10-year-old Gavin comes home from school feeling sick. Days or perhaps weeks later, he wakes up to discover that his youngest sibling, Ruby, has contracted his illness (which turns out to be meningitis) and has died. So begins The Unpassing, which explores in shattering detail the toll this tragedy takes on a family of Taiwanese immigrants living in Alaska in the 1980s in search of a better life. It’s clear early on that there were strains in the family before Ruby’s death—Gavin’s father’s plumbing business is not doing well and his mother longs to go back to her fishing village in Taiwan where her mother and ailing father still live. Layered over these tensions, however, are blame for Ruby’s death, which pits the parents against each other, while narrator Gavin struggles silently with his guilt at bringing the sickness home with him, his older sister Pei Pei tries to move on and regain some semblance of normalcy, and his younger brother Natty searches in vain for Ruby, who he’s been told is merely “lost.”
This is a bleak book—things go from bad to worse and are framed by tragedies in the world at large (the Challenger explosion, the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the Exxon Valdez disaster)—but the writing is always good and often gorgeous, as when Gavin describes his sleepless nights: “As I sank away from consciousness, the overhead glare kept me swaying in the shallowest layer of sleep, a net of two-second dreams.” And author Chia-Chia Lin beautifully and heartbreakingly wrestles with the idea of “home” and what that means to people who don’t really feel they belong anywhere. Ruby’s death is the straw that collapses the fragile idea of home the family has built in Alaska, but Lin seems to suggest that even had she lived, a real sense of home would still prove elusive. “It was a kind of violence, what my father had done,” Gavin says. “He had brought us to a place we didn’t belong, and taken us from a place we did. Now we yearned for all places and found peace in none.” If you like beautiful writing and don’t mind your family sagas on the dark side, The Unpassing is an unflinching look at what it means to be an immigrant and to try to make a home and hold a family together in a strange world. Recommended.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for my honest review.
This is a bleak book—things go from bad to worse and are framed by tragedies in the world at large (the Challenger explosion, the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the Exxon Valdez disaster)—but the writing is always good and often gorgeous, as when Gavin describes his sleepless nights: “As I sank away from consciousness, the overhead glare kept me swaying in the shallowest layer of sleep, a net of two-second dreams.” And author Chia-Chia Lin beautifully and heartbreakingly wrestles with the idea of “home” and what that means to people who don’t really feel they belong anywhere. Ruby’s death is the straw that collapses the fragile idea of home the family has built in Alaska, but Lin seems to suggest that even had she lived, a real sense of home would still prove elusive. “It was a kind of violence, what my father had done,” Gavin says. “He had brought us to a place we didn’t belong, and taken us from a place we did. Now we yearned for all places and found peace in none.” If you like beautiful writing and don’t mind your family sagas on the dark side, The Unpassing is an unflinching look at what it means to be an immigrant and to try to make a home and hold a family together in a strange world. Recommended.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for my honest review.
October 18, 2021
A somber, melancholic, and haunting novel set in the 1980s about the tragedies and crises that beset a Taiwanese family living in Alaska. Their home is a tiny house miles outside Anchorage, solitary in a subdivision that was never built, surrounded and isolated by beautiful and brutal nature in which the children play. The family of six consists of the father, an engineer in Taiwan, who now picks up work around well sites, the mother, who forages alongside the highways and often points out across the water as if her Taiwanese village can be seen, and their four children - smart teenaged Pei-Pei, sensitive 10 year old Gavin, five year old Natty who draws the solar system, and little Ruby who can eat as much as a man. It's quickly clear that the issues between the father and mother are not new. He moved the family to Alaska so they could see the stars and is a constant disappointment to his wife, who is smart and tenacious, the book opening with her challenging the children about what they would do if she were dead. The novel is narrated in the first-person by Gavin, looking back from adulthood at this time in his family's marginalized life, his narration capturing his sensitivity, the uncertainties and insights of childhood, as well as the power and effects of nature. Elegiac and lyrical, Alaska is fully rendered, as are these mournful lives taking place between worlds, in spare prose that lingers.
April 16, 2022
I was stunned by this book’s lyrical prose, and the accuracy of its metaphors. I did have a hard time paying attention at times while listening to the audiobook, but somewhere after the halfway point I found myself unable to put it down. The story builds really effectively and, while heavy at times, it’s an important depiction of life as an immigrant. Lin’s ability to frame a scene and end it at the exact right moment is so powerful. And I was struck by how little she has to tell us—the narrative does the heavy lifting. Its slow start is the only reason I didn’t give it 5 stars, but that’s probably says more about me than the book.
May 8, 2019
Brilliant! Written from the perspective of a child, dealing with loss, change and life in Alaska, I'm reminded of the magical ways children think in order to make sense of their worlds. Fabulous debut novel!
did-not-finish
July 1, 2019Nice writing but I didn’t love the audio narrator’s voice and most of all the story was way too child-character-centered to hold my interest. Bailed a quarter of the way in.
February 23, 2020
Chia-Chia Lin’s The Unpassing is essentially the story of a Taiwanese family torn apart in the wake of bereavement. The family suffers loss at multiple levels, having emigrated from their home country to the cold, desolate land of Alaska. The American dream that lures them out of their comfort zone, their community, eludes them when they finally tread on the ‘mythical’ American soil.
The father, industrious but defeated, is unable to shoulder the burden of keeping a family of 6 afloat. After the death of his toddler, Ruby, who succumbs to an outbreak of meningitis, an unwavering feeling of failure takes root in him. The mother, a reticent but occasionally fervent homemaker, blames her husband for the family’s misfortunes. The children, Gavin, Pei-Pei, and Natty are left to their own devices. They meander in the woods that surround their bare home, making friends with the neighbours on the other side of the clearing, and delaying return to their home which feels devoid of warmth after Ruby’s demise.
Chia-Chia Lin manages to touch upon many themes in the book. There’s the burden of masculinity and how it crushes the spirit of men as we see in the case of the father, who’s clueless in the face of the afflictions that befall the family one after the other. A major part of the book is hinged upon the family’s poverty and it illuminates the struggles of being an immigrant. The rules of survival change drastically when you’re a foreigner and poor. Lin also hones her writer’s lens on how grief can consume you whole if it’s not managed effectively.
The novel moves at a quiet pace. The grief that shackles the family is always understated. Mostly, it feels as if there isn’t much happening. But if you read closely, you can sense the family’s gradual collapse. The book is a slow-burner and it’s only during the last couple of pages that things seem to fit together to give you the larger picture. As much as I admired Lin’s scope of writing, I wish she had fleshed out her characters more. I felt very little for them. The book dazzles in parts, but those were few and too far-apart for my liking.
The father, industrious but defeated, is unable to shoulder the burden of keeping a family of 6 afloat. After the death of his toddler, Ruby, who succumbs to an outbreak of meningitis, an unwavering feeling of failure takes root in him. The mother, a reticent but occasionally fervent homemaker, blames her husband for the family’s misfortunes. The children, Gavin, Pei-Pei, and Natty are left to their own devices. They meander in the woods that surround their bare home, making friends with the neighbours on the other side of the clearing, and delaying return to their home which feels devoid of warmth after Ruby’s demise.
Chia-Chia Lin manages to touch upon many themes in the book. There’s the burden of masculinity and how it crushes the spirit of men as we see in the case of the father, who’s clueless in the face of the afflictions that befall the family one after the other. A major part of the book is hinged upon the family’s poverty and it illuminates the struggles of being an immigrant. The rules of survival change drastically when you’re a foreigner and poor. Lin also hones her writer’s lens on how grief can consume you whole if it’s not managed effectively.
The novel moves at a quiet pace. The grief that shackles the family is always understated. Mostly, it feels as if there isn’t much happening. But if you read closely, you can sense the family’s gradual collapse. The book is a slow-burner and it’s only during the last couple of pages that things seem to fit together to give you the larger picture. As much as I admired Lin’s scope of writing, I wish she had fleshed out her characters more. I felt very little for them. The book dazzles in parts, but those were few and too far-apart for my liking.
February 8, 2019
This is the story of a Taiwanese immigrant family in Alaska in the 1980s looking for the good old American dream. Things don't work out as planned, as illness and death and lawsuits lead to poverty and disintegration of family. The writing is good with vibrant characters, with the exception of the narrator who I didn't really get to know and had to remind myself that he was a boy and not a girl once or twice. It felt like the lesson of the book came too late and was a bit forced. Overall a good book with some minor flaws. Thanks to goodreads and the publisher for the free copy.
November 24, 2022
4.5 but i found the ending a bit hasty, like the book could have gone on for another 50-75 pages and might have wrapped things up in a way that didn't feel as contrived. nonetheless, this novel is a tour de force, an exemplar of nature writing and writing about children. like another one of my favorite books that deals with children and loss/grief, do not say we have nothing, the unpassing is so precise and deliberate in language and imagery that everything hits 1000x as hard as it otherwise might. very sad, now going to work it into my dissertation
January 2, 2020
What I most appreciated about this novel was Lin's gorgeous and precise evocation of its Alaskan setting and its absolute emotional authenticity.
She described the forests near Anchorage where the family of Taiwanese immigrants lived with such specificity that I could feel, see, and smell them. She always made the reader aware of the quality of light as the novel unfolded--whether we were in endless summer daylight or the relentless dark of winter. The mood of the story matched its setting, with its cold rain and enormous, haunting forests echoing the grief the family feels over the loss of their young daughter, Ruby, due to meningitis.
The ten-year-old narrator, Gavin, who infected Ruby with meningitis but survived, has the quiet stillness and keen observational acuity of a forest creature. All of his reactions, in every scene, were convincing, as was the sad story of his father, once an engineer, diminished in this country to lesser work, and his determined mother, who cannot accept defeat.
She described the forests near Anchorage where the family of Taiwanese immigrants lived with such specificity that I could feel, see, and smell them. She always made the reader aware of the quality of light as the novel unfolded--whether we were in endless summer daylight or the relentless dark of winter. The mood of the story matched its setting, with its cold rain and enormous, haunting forests echoing the grief the family feels over the loss of their young daughter, Ruby, due to meningitis.
The ten-year-old narrator, Gavin, who infected Ruby with meningitis but survived, has the quiet stillness and keen observational acuity of a forest creature. All of his reactions, in every scene, were convincing, as was the sad story of his father, once an engineer, diminished in this country to lesser work, and his determined mother, who cannot accept defeat.
May 8, 2019
Beautifully written if spare and grim, this account of a family of Taiwanese immigrants attempting to make a life in Alaska will remain in memory. As it is, memory is the central theme here, as well as search for home: “It was a kind of violence, what my father had done. He had brought us to a place we didn’t belong, and taken us from a place we did. Now we yearned for all places and found peace in none.”
Told from the point of view of Gavin who is remembering the events of 1986 when he was 10. He looks back on that time to make sense of what happened, his contracting meningitis, and his younger sister's succumbing to the disease and the effect that had on the grieving family. Blaming himself for her illness, it is only later he learns the truth, which doesn't soften the memory.
Life in rural Alaska is brutally brought to life, and my only objection was to the resolution which was somehow hurried and felt a little unfinished.
Told from the point of view of Gavin who is remembering the events of 1986 when he was 10. He looks back on that time to make sense of what happened, his contracting meningitis, and his younger sister's succumbing to the disease and the effect that had on the grieving family. Blaming himself for her illness, it is only later he learns the truth, which doesn't soften the memory.
Life in rural Alaska is brutally brought to life, and my only objection was to the resolution which was somehow hurried and felt a little unfinished.
September 1, 2019
Chia-Chia Lin's "Unpassing" is a much-acclaimed (positive reviews from NY Times, Kirkus; long-list for Best First Novel from the Center for Fiction) literary novel that has been described as "vast" and "spare," which opens the question of how a work can be both vast and spare. The answer, of course, is that like the Alaskan wilderness that serves as backdrop to this work, Unpassing is both vast and spare. The sweep of the work is that of a family's disintegration and the line of the execution is clean and sparse, constituting another milestone in the Iowa Writers' Workshop list of top-trained artists and an achievement that should be celebrated on its own merits for its execution and immersive ability.
Lin's work is distinct from those in the same genre of "immigrant novel." It does not aim for the crowd-pleasing notes of Amy Tan nor the arguable chinoiserie of Gish Jen--two other Chinese-American writers that might serve as bases for comparison to understand the work. So, it would be a surprise to this reviewer at least if Unpassing achieves best-seller status. But, if the artist is aiming high and hits the high target, then it will all be worth it in the end, and the community of readers of this work can take heart that there is such a thing as high literary merit and the "insider's crowd" at least can earn its own elevated position as taste-makers and exclusivity gate-keepers. What can one say, but, bravo and (repeatedly) we look forward to the next work.
Unpassing is about a tragedy that hits a family, and its appeal should extend beyond that of Asian-American / diaspora readers. Congratulations to the writer for being considered for the Center for Fiction's award, and take a moment if your are a prospective reader to consider this work for your next good read.
The author of this work is a friend of a friend, but I received the book at my own cost, and will receive no compensation financial or otherwise for this review.
Lin's work is distinct from those in the same genre of "immigrant novel." It does not aim for the crowd-pleasing notes of Amy Tan nor the arguable chinoiserie of Gish Jen--two other Chinese-American writers that might serve as bases for comparison to understand the work. So, it would be a surprise to this reviewer at least if Unpassing achieves best-seller status. But, if the artist is aiming high and hits the high target, then it will all be worth it in the end, and the community of readers of this work can take heart that there is such a thing as high literary merit and the "insider's crowd" at least can earn its own elevated position as taste-makers and exclusivity gate-keepers. What can one say, but, bravo and (repeatedly) we look forward to the next work.
Unpassing is about a tragedy that hits a family, and its appeal should extend beyond that of Asian-American / diaspora readers. Congratulations to the writer for being considered for the Center for Fiction's award, and take a moment if your are a prospective reader to consider this work for your next good read.
The author of this work is a friend of a friend, but I received the book at my own cost, and will receive no compensation financial or otherwise for this review.
February 5, 2019
It's been a while since I read a book without a basic plot, though the book was well written as to the words and dialogue used. It was an ARC edition & came across to me as more of a family diary.
A family from Taiwan moves to Anchorage, Alaska - father, mother, & their 4 children. One of the children (Ruby) dies from meningitis, though her brother who also contracted it managed to survive. This is the story of the day-to-day events which the family had to deal with in their new environment. Though the father repairs or replaces septic tanks, he comes across to the reader as mentally unstable and partially responsible for Ruby's death. The mother is the one who holds the family together.
The family is evicted from their home, whereupon the father packs up some household belongings in his truck and tells the children they are going on a vacation. They eventually return to the home days later to find they are locked out. The father breaks in & finds that the items they left behind are all gone, but they remain there anyway.
The best part of this family diary is when one of the children is lost in the woods and the steps the family has to take to find the child, even though they are not all in agreement with it. The story has a reader-friendly ending & not one that I saw coming.
A family from Taiwan moves to Anchorage, Alaska - father, mother, & their 4 children. One of the children (Ruby) dies from meningitis, though her brother who also contracted it managed to survive. This is the story of the day-to-day events which the family had to deal with in their new environment. Though the father repairs or replaces septic tanks, he comes across to the reader as mentally unstable and partially responsible for Ruby's death. The mother is the one who holds the family together.
The family is evicted from their home, whereupon the father packs up some household belongings in his truck and tells the children they are going on a vacation. They eventually return to the home days later to find they are locked out. The father breaks in & finds that the items they left behind are all gone, but they remain there anyway.
The best part of this family diary is when one of the children is lost in the woods and the steps the family has to take to find the child, even though they are not all in agreement with it. The story has a reader-friendly ending & not one that I saw coming.
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