Ursula, Under

by Ingrid Hill

A dangerous rescue attempt in Michigan has captured the attention of the entire country. A two-year-old girl has fallen down a mine shaft. Ursula Wong is the only child of a poor family and referred to by one member of the TV audience as 'half-breed trailer trash', not worth all the expense. But there is much more to Ursula than she is the last of her family line - and here the novel explodes into a gorgeous saga of culture, history and heredity. By its end, we've met, among others of Ursula's forebears, a second-century-B. C. Chinese alchemist; an orphaned consort to a Swedish queen; and Ursula's great-great-grandfather, Jake Maki, a miner who died in a cave-in aged twenty-nine. Ursula's fate echoes those of her ancestors, many of whom so narrowly escaped not being born that any given individual's life comes to seem a miracle.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Book Club, Historical, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Adult

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Ingrid (Hokanson) Hill was born in New York City, and because her father was a Swedish-American captain, she spent much of her childhood in New Orleans. Although she spent three years in Washington State, she has spent half of her adult life in the university communities of Ann Arbor, Michigan, receiving a BA in 1972 and Iowa City, Iowa, where she earned her doctorate.

Hill, who has twelve children, including two sets of twins, began her writing career as a short story writer. Her first published book is a collection of these stories titled Dixie Church Interstate Blues. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa and has twice received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has been married twice, marrying James Hill, of Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, in 1989. She lives in Iowa City as of 2020.

Her honors and awards include: Two grants from National Endowment for the Arts; Great Lakes Book Award, and Best Novel designation, Washington Post Books World, both 2004, and Michigan Notable Book designation, 2005, all for Ursula, Under.

Reviews

[Zinta · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I have for some time now been reading books to illuminate the meaning of life, here was a break to turn that coin on its other side and ask of its value. To ponder meaning, after all, assumes life has value. And if it does, are all of our lives to be valued equally?

When 2 1/2-year-old Ursula falls into an old mine shaft in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, media and curiosity seekers swarm the scene, and not one alone asks about the mixed race child born of poor parents - is she worth saving? How much investment and effort is one such child worth?

Ingrid Hill, in this debut novel, explores the question of one life's value by going back into history, traveling the long and complex limbs of a family tree, to an ancestry of two thousand years and a genealogy that contains within it royalty and peasants, slaves and alchemists, immigrants and miners. Little Ursula's ethnic roots wind through China, Sweden, Finland, Poland, traveling over land and oceans, passing through the courts of royalty with as much intrigue as through the tents and barracks of immigrants, until the two branches of her parents' families, the Wongs and the Makis, finally meet to create this child. In one tiny child: the spans of millenia and the bloodlines of countless generations. Such is the value of one human life, that it contains the lives of many, and these many are intertwined by all who have ever lived, all across the globe, a concentration of all humanity and all the characteristics and traits, good and evil, therein. Every life, we soon see, is a vessel holding all that has been and all that will be.

To hold so many threads in the plotting of a novel such as this, author Ingrid Hill has accomplished a no less than amazing feat, her writing skill already at such a level of artistry that it is nearly impossible to imagine how she might top this stellar debut. Yet, realizing what value, what hidden treasure and untold promise our bloodlines may contain, why not? Indeed, every stop along the way in this novel beckons a novel of its own.

I first picked up this book for the very simple reason that its story frame was out of the Keweenaw, a place I too once lived, my own storyline weaving through the area, holding now my own personal bits and pieces of hidden treasure. But if my expectations were simple enough, seeking but a pleasurable revisiting to the warming of nostalgia, Ingrid Hill astounded me with her range and reach, her skill and her sense of beauty combined with deeper meaning, winning me over with a standing ovation by the turning of the final page. "Ursula, Under" proved to be not only an excellent story well told, but a masterpiece of literary artistry that now tops my list of all-time favorite books.

[Diana Higgins · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just could not read this book. I liked the beginning, even though the overwritten phrases continually distracted me from the story, but then when the story changed to that of the Chinese alchemist I almost gave up right then.

I did stick with it through that part. Let me just say that I LOVE the premise of this book, that each life is beautiful and valuable, that each one of us is only here because of the interesting and unique ancestors that came before us. It was just the writing! The Chinese section, my god, could there be more stereotypes? Cliche after cliche was hauled out and then the parade of cardboard Chinese woman (and yes, they were all "inscrutable").

I tried to stick with it for the Finnish story but I could see that the cliches were starting to pile up there, too. I skipped to the end (for closure, as another skipper above mentioned).

Overall, this story had wonderful bones but in my opinion it just didn't deliver.

[Saleh MoonWalker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Onvan : Ursula, Under - Nevisande : Ingrid Hill - ISBN : 143035452 - ISBN13 : 9780143035459 - Dar 476 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2004

[Ami · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is such a great, great read. I tried to convince everyone to pick it up for summer a couple years ago, but people kept not finishing it. I believe that the third chapter, set in ancient China, is the sticking point. Everyone thought the rest of the novel was going to be as dry and inexplicable as that one. But it's not, at all.

[Hector · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece--seriously, one of the best American novels written in the last twenty years. Give copies to everyone you know. They will thank you. I can't recommend this outstanding book enough, and I can't think of anyone who wouldn't enjoy it.

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't written a review on Goodreads in a long time, but this book warrants it. This is a behemoth of a book. . . okay, not really. It's 476 pages. But it's so very intricately woven with random threads going off this way and that, it takes a great deal of energy to stay focused while reading it. It doesn't move quickly and is definitely not plot-driven.

However, this is a beautiful novel, if a bit too wordy at times. I got bogged down in ancient China and nearly gave up. I'm glad I didn't.

The whole idea behind this novel seems to be based upon a well-loved passage from the New Testament in Hebrews 12:1 which says: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us."

This novel is about all the characters, events, mishaps, twists of fate and misfortune that got Ursula to the point where she is today. And she is indeed a miracle. The book is about how the things that happen (or don't happen to us) are but a thread in the grand tapestry of life on this planet, and about how we are connected to each other in a million different ways.

I'm not sure how the author managed to pull this off, because I don't know that I've ever read a novel that was so exquisitely and painstakingly written with so much attention to detail.

Unfortunately, that's also why I'm giving it only 4 stars instead of 5. Sometimes the detail got to be excessive, which made sections of the book boring. Also, the chapters are EXTREMELY long. . . more difficult to divide up into shorter reading sessions. It took me 2 weeks to get through this one. . . too long in my opinion.

Some favorite quotes come from the Marjatta storyline, near the end of the book:

"She recalls focusing on the young woman's eyes as she intoned the verse: 'Trust in the Lord and lean not on your own understanding. . . ,' and the children repeated the verse, singsong, most of them parroting, few of them thinking about what they said.
'That day in Sunday school she had raised her hand. . . 'Teacher, what does this mean, 'He will make straight your paths'?'
'This means, everything you do, your actions, the thoughts you allow to possess you. . . '
'Does it mean that we shall not have trouble?' Marjatta asked.
'It means He shall make straight your paths, said the teacher with an insistent edge to her voice.
'Does it mean that if we live well, live by the Word--'
'It is time to back to the choir,' the young teacher said."

"Marjatta sighs and slams the book. This is not what she wanted to hear. She wanted to open her Bible and have it tell her that the little white house with the roses would come in the next post."

[Marvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hill, who lives in Iowa City, has been in several church school classes with me (including the one I taught) and contributed good insights. The book has some beautifully written passages & scenes that don't hold together all that well & is undermined by some overwiting, some repetition of themes, & a lot of (literally) incredible coincidences. The story centers around a little girl (& her family) who falls down an abandoned mine shaft in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. From beginning to end, the book's action, in one sense, covers less than 24 hours in its nearly 500 pages. But to demonstrate that this girl's rescue was worth the amazing effort & expense it required, the author tells the isolated stories of a number of the girl's (unknown to her or even her parents) ancestors, from 6th-century B.C.E. China to a 19th-century Finnish woman who immigrates to the UP, all to show "So many generations, back into history and then prehistory, all concentrated into this one little girl." (13) They're in a sense long, loosely linked short stories. There's much to like about the book, but at least as much to make me say, "Give me a break!"

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I originally picked up Ingrid Hill's Ursula, Under because it sounded intriguing, and the quote by Audrey Niffenegger on the back cover certainly helped this decision. Here, Hill uses rather a fascinating approach to telling a story; she chooses random ancestors of Ursula Wong, the two-year-old who has fallen down a mine shaft at the outset of the novel, and builds often huge chapters around them. One of these ancestors, for instance, lived in China centuries ago, and another migrated from Finland to America in the early 1900s. Clearly, a lot of research into different periods of history has been done here.

Hill's writing is, for the most part, beautiful and intellectual, but some sections do feel a little overwritten at times. The stories here are blended together, and connect to one another, in clever and unpredictable ways. There were a couple of these character studies which I found fascinating; others I was not so keen on. Regardless, Ursula, Under feels very accomplished, particularly given that it is a debut novel. Architecturally, I very much admired it.

[Lauri · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really liked the architecture of the book and the writing style was nice. I mean, the way that Ursula and her ancient ancestors' stories were woven together was unique and original. But, the author failed to get me to care enough about the characters to lose myself in the book. I just didn't really care about what happened to any of them, which is sad, because there were some interesting characters there.

[Dara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the exploration of ancestry across many centuries and continents. There were many surprising degrees of separation that the author weaved together well. It was so extensive that it did get a little complicated at times and made for a slower read. That’s the main reason I give a 4 instead of 5. But the connections between everyone, the little details, and the “chance” happenings that seem like nothing only to become so important in the end, really kept me hooked. I also felt a slight touch of magic and clairvoyance in parts which made it even more enjoyable for me.

[Stephen Gallup · Rating 5 out of 5]

One summer day in 2003, a little girl on an outing with her parents tumbles down an abandoned mine shaft in the backwoods of northern Michigan. Justin and Annie, who’d been only steps away, enter panic mode. The rest of the world gradually begins responding in the ways it always does when such things occur, mobilizing rescue workers and eager media people, and, far back on the periphery, emitting unsympathetic commentary about the expenditure of so much fuss over mere “halfbreed trailer trash.”

But most of Ursula Under traces multiple highly improbable chains of events extending from more than two millennia back in little Ursula’s family tree, the point being that this child, who'd resulted from an unlikely Sino-Finn union, is the culmination of all those previous lives, each of which could easily have become a dead end, each of which has a stake in today's outcome.

Narrating from a wonderfully omniscient perspective ("a God's-eye view"), Ingrid Hill tells the story first of Qin Lao, an herbalist who, 88 generations earlier, is dedicated to discovering the secret of life extension (if not immortality). Qin Lao does survive into vigorous old age, but doesn't produce an heir, despite many decades of trying with two wives and three concubines. Finally, having outlived them all, and after 20 years of celibacy, he accepts an unknown traveling woman into his house and makes her pregnant. Their son grows up to become a warrior for the new Chinese emperor (who by chance is also named Qin) and is eventually immortalized as one of the famous terra-cotta statues at Xi’an--a statue that bears a startling resemblance to his descendant Justin.

Annie’s side includes Kyllikki, deaf-mute daughter of Rauno, living in an obscure European village in about the year 700. Because of the disability, marriage for her had been thought unlikely--until the arrival of Olavi, a likeable and intelligent trader from a caravan just back from China. Olavi is also mute, but using signs he tells captivating stories about his exotic merchandise--boxes, for example, made of wood from magical peach trees whose fruit had conferred immortality to those who ate them. A match between Kyllikki and Olavi is generally accepted as being ordained, and a boy named Aaron results.

Disabilities are one of many recurring themes through the generations recounted here. Qin Lao’s servant had also been mute, as was another of Justin's ancestors. And the next story (set in the early 1600s) concerns Ming Tao (whose name means brilliant peach), who’d been crippled from birth and therefore was also unmarriageable. (Ming Tao nevertheless conceives via the most extraordinary of interventions, contributing her bit to the line that will lead to Justin and Ursula.) In the modern setting, Annie too is crippled, having been struck by a speeding car as a child and suffering such severe fractures to her pelvis that doctors have advised her never to get pregnant.

Coincidences are another theme. For example, Qin Lao understood that as an infant he had appeared in a basket on the doorstop of the master who then raised him; and likewise one bitterly cold night in Sweden Annie's ancestor Violeta was left in a basket in the courtyard of a castle, to be adopted by a servant girl there.

Of course, absolutely none of this heritage is known to Justin or Annie. They can't even identify faces in old photographs handed down from a couple generations earlier, despite noting family resemblances.

This is a delightful epic, unlike any others that come to mind. It's sprawling and yet, once you perceive what it's about, every page is loaded with content that contributes to the message: The continuation of life from one generation to the next is far more haphazard and amazing, and therefore more precious, than we can know. And together, the myriad interconnecting stories create a breathtaking symmetry, held together by what the narrator calls "an intricate providence," impelled by misfortune as much as by anything else, but sometimes unexpectedly squeezing out touching moments of reconciliation and sublime joy.

"Life is just so absurd, so absurd, going on this way and going on, everyone being born, marrying, going away, dying, coming back home in the looks in the eyes of their children, passing it down, not remembering, doing it all again."

I read this when the book was first published, 11 years ago, but somehow never wrote a review back then. Going through it a second time has been a real pleasure.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was on the fence about giving this book a 4 or 5 star review. I'll give it a 5 star recommendation, because I think it is very worth the read and might likely be someone's favorite book of all time if they give it a try after seeing a nice high recommendation. I think most people would give it four or five stars.

It is the story of a two and a half year old who falls down a well. But, as the book says, what you see of an iceberg is only what is above the surface and the iceberg is formed by the much bigger portion of itself you can't see. Ursula is not just the girl we see, but exists due to the often unlikely survival of all the people who were her ancestors.

The book steps back in time, with a series of stories about Ursula's family, way back, to the 3rd Century BC in the first case. But the author keeps bringing us updates on the small Ursula in the well throughout the book.

My only real beef with the book is minor. I appreciate more chapter breaks, and the book is written in such a way that each story gets its own chapter. If I had had a few more break points in there it would have made me enjoy it more... some of those chapters were rather long. It made me wish it had been edited a bit, purely because of reader fatigue late at night.

At its best, Ursula, Under made me realize that there was likely much drama in each of our pasts, if only due to the sheer number of generations needed to produce us. We take for granted the lives of those who faced hardship, who emigrated, who married for opportunity not love, who lost beloved children, who led noble lives, who died tragic deaths, and who ultimately, led to.... us.

[Rachel B · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned this less than 10% of the way in due to sexual content. (There was also language, including the names of God and Christ used in vain.)

[Ursula · Rating 2 out of 5]

I checked this out of the library because 1. my name is Ursula and 2. it says it takes place in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where I was living at that particular moment.

Unfortunately, not much of the action actually takes place in the UP. The supposed main story is about a little girl named Ursula who falls down an old, unmarked mine shaft. Her father is Chinese American, and her mother Finnish American. This is important because the book immediately leaves Ursula to her unknown fate and takes us into the far-distant past, first to an ancestor of Ursula's father in China and then to one of her mother's ancestor in what will be Finland. Hill continues the pattern - alternating chapters between the parents' ancestors and someone from the present day. Ursula's actual story - falling down the shaft and the rescue attempt - only bookend the story.

Overall, I'd rank this one as "disappointing," in spite of the glowing blurbs on the back about this "exciting adventure", "a recipe of both prodigal and precise imagination", "extravagant and absorbing", "a kind of a prose miracle, a page-turner of a tale about an imperiled child, a story built out of beautiful language." The concept is interesting, I guess - going back to look at how the various accidents of fate result in any one of us existing at all - but it requires a lot of research and imagination to accomplish. I became suspicious of the research in the second section in China, which takes place in the late 1500s. She says something about how at the time, Shakespeare is writing but the Chinese man doesn't know anything about him (okay), nor anything about England (implying he doesn't know of its existence). Her justification for this seems to be that the Chinese think their empire is the center of the world and nothing outside it matters. Well, yes ... but Marco Polo visited China in the 1200s and they had a lot of trade with the outside world so I am not sure that this guy would have no idea that a place like England even existed 300 years later. And then she talked about the outsiders as being "barbarians", which the Chinese called them because that's what they thought their languages sounded like - "bar bar bar". This is totally a fact about the origin of the word "barbarian", but it does not come from the Chinese at all. It's a term of European origin (Greek specifically). I feel like she ran across that story and couldn't resist putting it in - in totally the wrong place.

Then there's imagination - she had plenty, but I think maybe she should have reined it in a little. This could easily be titled "How Infinitely Miserable Your Ancestors Were". Seriously - one of the stories involves a woman in a leper colony. And how she ends up is worse than you're even imagining.

[Fionnuala · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alright. I've been thinking for a while about this, and so far the closest I can come to describing it is "Jodi Picoult, if she had slightly more talent." This is still not exactly a compliment, as I do not vibe with Jodi Picoult. This book definitely reminds me of her writing, but a little more advanced: the subject matter is more complex, the plot more elaborate, and the content a little more risqué. I think that Hill is probably targeting a similar audience, but one not as likely to clutch pearls. This book contains a very interesting idea which is done... decently, I suppose. It isn't bad. But it isn't good, either.

There are parts of this book that are engaging and genuinely fascinating, and there are some really well fleshed-out characters. Unfortunately, this does not end up being as encouraging as it ought to be, because it really highlights the fact that most of the book is average at best, and poor at worst. There is some obvious skill in the blending together of the various stories and time periods, and from what I can tell, Hill has done her research and knows her stuff: it's clear that immigrant experiences and ancestry is an important subject to her, and her passion for this subject is undeniable. I can see what she's trying to do with the book, and she gets her point across well. It's actually very touching in places, and the message is an important one. But as I've said before, I can't rate and review based on potential. It could have been brilliant, but it just wasn't.

I'll openly admit that part of this is on me. There was just something about the writing style that I did not like. It felt too waffly in a lot of places, and I described it to my partner at one point as "a book written for people who like to remember they're reading." I do not like to be constantly aware that I'm reading, so flowery prose, even if it is pretty, does not do it for me. There were many places in this book where it seemed far too in love with itself, and I think it could have been a lot shorter than it was. But the major thing that genuinely pissed me off was the amount of mistakes and typos I spotted. This is not a short book, and it is very dense, with a lot happening on every page. It requires a lot of commitment and focus. I do not mind doing this, of course, but when a book is absolutely riddled with unforgivable mistakes, I get annoyed. I wonder why I should be expected to care, when the author and the entire editing team obviously did not. I don't have a clue how this kind of thing happens, but it's insulting to everyone involved and just makes the book and the author and the publishing team look bad. I mean, some of these contraditions are a couple of lines apart. It was very jarring, left me distrustful of the story, and was just overall baffling. Some examples:

There she was, up on the housetop in her flannel slippers, crouching Asian style in the snow on the roof. He was twelve.
⠀⠀⠀Back of her there was a sky clear and black as Mindy Ji's hair: millions of stars, more of them visible to the naked eye than ten-year-old Justin had ever seen.

Later on this same page, it's revealed that Justin's father left in 1975, when Justin was two. This allows us to work out his birth year: 1973. On the immediately preceding page, it's revealed that this incident on the roof occured in 1985, meaning that twelve years old is the correct age. Yet there's the incorrect age, literally a line down from the correct one.

[...] deaf since the age of five-- fifteen years now, twelve since the death of her mother in childbirth[...]
⠀⠀⠀She remembers only the fever itself, a red glow inside her head, pulsing, a furnace, her stepmother and sister and two servants hovering over her[...]

So if Kyllikki was five when she had this illness, why does she have a stepmother? Fifteen years since she was five, and twelve since her mother's death -- Kyllikki's mother would have died when Kyllikki was eight years old. Yet her stepmother tends to her, and her mother dies in childbirth? This is not a culture with any tradition of multiple wives or divorce, so it's reasonable to assume Kyllikki's mother was still married to Kyllikki's father and died giving birth to a full sibling. The timeline here is once again just wrong, and again, these contradictions occur within a few pages.

Then there's an occurrence where a character's name is spelled wrong, and several where the same phrase repeats itself where it obviously changed position during a rewrite and was never cleaned up:

The entire bookcase in Ursula's room is filled with picture books, many of them from the library sale, others presents from Mindy Ji or Tasha, in Ursula's room.

Violeta and Carl-Marcus returned from New Sweden to the estate outside Uppsala, where the ancestral home sat intact, its furniture shrouded in spooky cloths bathed in the dust of several years. Oscar Lucassen came along in tow as protector and tutor-to-be for the child.
⠀⠀⠀The family home was intact, its furniture covered with spooky clothes bathed in the dust of several years. The fields were still being cultivated by tenant farmers.

Finally, there's a part where two characters "lie listening to each other's breaths," except they're both fully deaf. I could go on, but I'm sure I've illustrated my point.

I'm sure there's a lot of people who just don't care about this. I'm aware I'm probably guilty of being a pedant. But I don't enjoy glaringly obvious mistakes in the books I read. I get mortified thinking about seeing a basic typo in anything I share publicly. I feel like, if I'm going to expect people to read my writing, the least I can do is make it good. Stuff like this strikes me as lazy and uncaring, and it's very difficult for me to commit to a book if I feel like the author has just thrown it together. I don't think I would feel so strongly if the rest of the book had been better, but combined with the fact that it was far too flowery and a little too wishy-washy for me, as well as the fact that I just don't vibe with its style, I'm afraid it all added up.

I can absolutely see why other people would enjoy this book. There are some very touching moments and nobody can say that it's boring. But it really was not for me. I didn't hate it, but it was the definition of alright, and to be honest I find that more unforgiveable than if a book was simply bad.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really amazing book, and my experience each time I've read it has been different. The author follows the storyline back from a little girl who is descended from certain areas of the world, and in a set of flashbacks, takes us back & forth between the story of a family and their ancestors. Really compelling story, very interesting writing style. I highly recommend at least trying it out, because it is really hard to explain the plot very well.

It is an intricate book, and you may find (as I did) that you need to put it down to take a breath. Its one of those novels you either love or loath, but I think it brings a lot to the table, both in learning about how complex each person in this world is. I love the way the family stories weave around and how they all culminate in producing this lovely child, Ursula.

[Celeste Ng]

This was recommended to me by a bookseller (at the amazing Porter Square Books!) and I must say, booksellers know the best hidden gems. I'd never heard of this book or author, but it's a big, ambitious novel, spanning millenia and exuberantly written. It starts with a tragedy--two-year-old Ursula Wong falls down an unused mine shaft in Michigans Upper Peninsula--but then dives into Ursula's genealogy, examining all the twists and turns of fate in her ancestors' lives that led to this one child. The scope is huge and the language is dense, but sparkling, and though it took me nearly a month to finish reading this book--life interfered a number of times--I'm glad to have been introduced to it.

[Jennifer Doyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, so good! This is the story of Ursula, a little girl who falls down an abandoned mine shaft. From ancient China, Finland, across oceans, in missions and shacks, this story examines her rich history and lineage that allows her to even exist. I loved the complexity and layers to the story of Ursula's life, imagining what a miracle that any of us exist. I will admit that the first story of the Chinese alchemist was the hardest to get through as other reviews have mentioned, but it was still an enjoyable part of the book.

[Megan Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

So stunning. A gorgeous tale of a sweet little girl trapped in a mine shaft, and the family history that got her there. Chapters alternate between her present day rescue and various ancestors' adventures. Themes of miracle babies, good/bad husbands, good/bad marriages, Finnish and Chinese heritage, and disabilities permeate each anecdotal chapter, and the central story. It's such a beautiful expression of the way or family history affects us and connects us, whether we know it or not. Ending is... a little too tied up in a bow but I loved this family so much I didn't care.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katherine wins, this was excellent. Though I have to say: it did not click for me until at least 1/4 of the way in, but after that, I was hooked. Just thinking about the thousands of stories that came before you were born is both overwhelming and exhilarating. This would make an excellent book club selection!

[Diya · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a read slowly and immerse oneself in the journey sorta book. Ingrid strings words together shaping tapestries in my mind of lives lived and linked together in weird and wonderful ways. She truly has an uncanny way of making it seem like I really was there, throughout history every step of the way. The last book ok I read with such an impact was Late Nights on Air.

[Esme · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book, telling of the lives of ancestors from China, Finland, America and elsewhere, stretching over a millenium, of a little girl who has fallen down a mineshaft. Each chapter tells a different story.

[Lady Drinkwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is my second attempt to read this book and I think I'm going to stop now. The story of a little girl who has fallen down a very big hole is interspersed with stories about her ancestry going back to China, Finland.. all sorts of places. I really liked the fallen down the hole story and would have liked to get to know more about the present day family but the parts in the past were just too dense and long. I had this feeling of wanting to get on with the story. It was as if someone was telling me a very exciting story over lunch, but would break off and go off at a tangent into lots of unnecessary detail about something very vaguely related to the exciting story, and I would feel very frustrated as it was nearly time to go back to work and I wanted to hear the end of the exciting story but feared I never would. Now that is not a good story teller. The detail was amazing, hopefully very well researched but there were too many characters, it could not hold my interest and was just too hard going. Its very rare that I give up on a book, particularly a well written one like this one, but life's too short!

[Annaka · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am seriously so annoyed at this book. First of all I wanted to stop reading it at the beginning the sentences are so incredibly confusing and the structure of them is just off, but I continued on anyways. All the way to page 370 and then I’m trying to read page 371 but instead of 371 is page 307 I skip through and try to find 371 later in the book but after a repeat chapter of one I’ve already read it goes from page 370 to 425. I can’t even finish this book. I knew from the beginning I should’ve stopped reading it but I didn’t and I seriously regret it. Absolute trash.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a good idea. I love collections of short stories masquerading as novels! There is one contemporary story interspersed with historical stories, each one featuring different ancestors in Ursula's family tree. The premise is wonderful, and is handled really well too. I don't know what order it was written in (it unfolds more or less chronologically) but the writing actually seems to improve over the course of the book. Either that or her style - full of interruptions like this one - grows on me. The characters certainly do. Each one of those ancestors' tales could have grown into a novel of its own. In fact, I'd really like to read the novel version of A Foundling At Court, I think it might have been my favourite section.

The one element of this that touches on magical realism is music. While magical realism is something that I enjoy, when done well, in this case it is my least favourite element of the stories. I like that music connects them, and that it is subtle in that sense - there's no "family song" getting passed down the generations or anything, just the presence of music is enough to tie them together. I was turned off by the fact that the characters were "hearing" (even the deaf one?) specific pieces of music that, as pointed out by the author herself, were yet to be written. What? Why did they have to be hearing Beethoven, specifically (in one case)? It felt weirdly forced and did not match the rest of the writing, which I found to be very intuitive.

Each of the stories had strife and twists - some of which did seem very out of the ordinary - but they were what drew you into to each new section and didn't feel so forced because the characters were great, well-drawn and believable. It certainly does make it feel like you could plunk any person down, draw a line through history connecting them to their ancestors and find a million interesting tales. It makes one of the biggest tragedies of the book (and there are a LOT) the fact that none of us knows this about ourselves. Not that we don't realise that it's possible, but that it's too vast and too far back so we don't know our own stories, we don't know which accidents or twists happened to make us possible. We barely know these stories in our parents' and grandparents' generations, let alone a couple thousand years back.

I'm curious about Ingrid Hill. Is she religious? The author bio says she has twelve children, which is sometimes a sign of religiosity, but then the novel seems to hint that strict adherence to doctrine is not her thing. So I'm not sure where she sits. There are a few miraculous events tucked in there, but there are plenty of tragedies too and I'm not sure that I believe her message is anything resembling "destiny". More, just accidents - some good, some bad. It's more of an expedition that begins with : Hey! Look at your cheek bones, or your curved baby finger, or your interest in language... lets go hunting through your genes to see where THEY came from.

[Elisascalise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disappointed. Had I not been encouraged to persist with this book, I admit I would have put it down after the first couple of pages. But then it grabbed me by the pulomonary and I have been disappointed every time I have had to put it down.

This book feeds my penchant for misplaced nostalgia through a series of characters who are connected by blood and really nothing else. Each chapter is devoted to one person in the blood line of a little girl, who has fallen down an unused mining shaft. Each chapter has an ending and could be a story on its own. With each ending I was satisfied that learned the fate of the character that I had just been engaged with. The chapter about Marjatta from Finland drew me in to the point of where I wished the whole book was about her. Every now and again, even I have feelings: I can be a sentimentalist, especially about blood lines, immigration, and connecting present and past, and I am getting a good dose (not finished yet...

P.S. If you liked Accordian Crimes by E. Annie Proulx, then you will probably like this book.

[Jody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hill's enchanting debut novel spans more than 2,000 years and is brimming with an engaging cast of characters. Annie and Justin Wong, who live in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, are on a day trip exploring the area where Annie's Finnish great-grandfather died in a mine collapse in 1926. Suddenly their only child, Ursula, disappears down an abandoned shaft, setting off a monumental rescue attempt and accompanying media frenzy. The author leaves that predictable plot behind, focusing instead on the young girl's many ancestors--those with the most interest in her safe return. A second-century B.C.E. Chinese alchemist, a deaf Finnish peasant living in 700 C.E., the child born to a crippled Chinese girl in the 1600s, and more--"a crowd of all the people whose blood and lives went into this little girl," brought vividly to life. In an elaborate "six degrees of separation" game, the author reveals centuries-old ties between relatives of both Annie and Justin, creating a magically entertaining, poetic, and heartfelt look at the often overlooked significance of extended family

[Wendy Bamber · Rating 3 out of 5]

The overall theme of this book captured my nostalgic side. I loved the idea that all of us are only here because our ancestors somehow made it possible by their meeting of each other, and were then able to produce at least one child to carry on the family line, so from that perspective the book really made me appreciate the struggle of my own ancestors. I also enjoyed most of the characters from Ursula's bloodline, some of which had beautiful love stories attached which I'm a sucker for. I did occasionally skip some pages where I felt the level of detail went too far, and I have to say some of the scenes were unnecessarily unpleasant. I understand that life isn't a bed of roses for everyone and every novel does not have to be a fairy tale but I felt a few scenes went over the top. I did keep reading though because most of it was interesting, intriguing actually, and I desperately wanted to find out what happened to Ursula. The ending was satisfying and made the book worth reading overall, if a little long winded at times.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful book! A real treasure to be savored while reading, awesome craftsmanship on the part of the writer, Ingrid Hill!

I kept hearing about how good this book is from several sources, and I only hesitated because it was about a kid that fell down a hole, and I'm sure other people have had the same knee-jerk "ugh" reaction about that sort of heartbreaking drama, but it is so much more than that, and so well done that I'm in love with this book. It's so vast and timeless, a classic bit of writing that thankfully caught the right eye in the publishing world willing to take the risk putting it out there for readers...beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!

[Meliza · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't think I'm going to make it through this one. It is a great premise, telling the stories of generations of inter-connected lives that lead to one particular family and a little girl who falls down a mine shaft. But in the execution, I found it difficult to keep caring about the main plot while being constantly led in other (more interesting) directions. Also the prose was quite painful at times, over-written to the point that I found myself skimming to get to the relevant sections.

And...a month later...i didn't make it. I almost never stop a book in the middle, but despite the awesome cover image and interesting sounding premise, this just didn't do it for me.