Ye Xin is one of over 14 million high school graduates in Chine who were forced to leave the cities during the Cultural Revolution and work in rural areas, where they received re-education from the peasants. They were the zhiqing or ‘educated youth’.

In the 1970s Ye Xin, along with masses of others, was allowed to return to his home city if he had no job in the rural area or if he were unmarried. He qualified, but others divorced their spouses and their children were left behind. Many of these zhiqing started new relationships in the city and kept their past lives undisclosed.

Imagine the disturbance when, years later, a group of children come to look for their birth parents.

After Ye Xin heard some of these heartbreaking stories he was compelled to write this novel. It vividly explores themes that are universally relevant, such as sibling rivalry, parent–child relationships, the importance of belonging, the complication of blended families and extramarital affairs. We follow five families living in the same area in Shanghai in high-rise with paper-thin walls. Every argument is witnessed and every action harshly judged by neighbours who decide what is immoral and unacceptable.

We meet so many sensitively drawn and convincing characters that I needed to create family diagrams to help me follow their lives. But this did not lessen my enjoyment of Yi Xin’s passionate narrative of the trials, entanglements and small redemptions that bind them all together in comples ways. I also enjoyed how the flashbacks flow unobtrusively from rural Xishuangbanna, telling of their first loves and the reasons for their return to Shanghai, and then back to their problems in the present.

The despair and the hope builds suspense through to the epilogue. I would welcome a sequel.