Isabelle Li’s 16 short stories immerse our senses in the depth of feeling, rhythms, and the mysterious elusiveness of poetry, while her easy conversational style focuses on events in the lives of a number of people who have emigrated from China. Set largely in China, Australia, Singapore and also in the Philippines and London, the stories oscillate from the tropics to the temperate zones, and from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere, where the moon in all its stages is the protagonists’ only companion. The stories reveal the emotional and cultural problems of the emigrants in a new land where they must deal with a new language.

In ‘Mooncake and Crab’, Crystal, a young Chinese migrant, defends herself against the insensitive ignorance of her dinner guests about social conditions in China. She tries to explain the story behind the Mooncake Festival but is met with indifference and a lack of interest.

Raven and Julian, in ‘Pebbles and Flowers’, are participating in an IVF program. As Raven puts all her energy into the embryos being developed for them, Julian feels himself fading into obscurity.

In ‘By the Riverbank’, a young woman and her boyfriend in China are brutally attacked by three men as they stroll under riverside willows. The young woman leaves China to separate herself from the tragic result of the attack. Now she constantly wants to tell her children what happened, but she can’t yet find the words.

The themes for the anthology are summed up in the final story, ‘Two Tongues’. Crystal translates for an audience listening to a panel of well-known Chinese poets. Their topic is ‘Loss of Homeland and Location of Self’. One of the writers, Yang, says that the Chinese language has no clear delineation between past, present and future, so the Chinese people are unable to reflect on their own past. But the poets correct this. The loss of first language is significant, but Crystal feels fortunate to see the world and express her feelings through two tongues.

I relished the language of these stories and the daily drama of the characters who reflect on their past, present and future.

Reviewed by Judith Grace