The newspapers called it the ‘Economic Crisis’. Comparisons to the Depression were rife, until the crisis worsened.
It became the ‘National Crisis’ and then simply, with no end in sight, ‘The Crisis’. Loss of jobs, loss of housing, loss of dignity. The American public needed a scapegoat, somebody to blame, so they blamed the Chinese. China’s affluence seemed to grow as America’s problems multiplied. Suddenly, it became dangerous if you had an ‘Asian’ face. Isolated attacks on Chinese Americans became daily events. When a person of Asian appearance attempted to assassinate a senator, the PACT laws were passed by the House and Senate.
The PACT laws were designed to outlaw unpatriotic behaviour and protect the people from threats to the American society from within. Those who did not conform, or behaved ‘unpatriotically’, had their children taken away from them. The novel opens with 12-year-old Noah, or ‘Bird’, living with his father. The time period seems to be the present. Margaret, his mother, left them three years ago. It’s obvious to the reader, but not Noah, that she did this to avoid losing him to the PACT laws. But what forced her to leave? After three years, Noah receives a letter from his mother. He sets out to find her, he must know her story.
This is one of those novels that seem prescient. A future that could so easily, under the right circumstances and the current state of the world, come to be. It is a wonderful book about ideology, misinterpretation, veiled authoritarianism, a warning of a possible xenophobic future. It is also about the love and bond between a mother and her son, and the indomitable human spirit.
My favourite read this year.
Reviewed by Neale Lucas
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Celeste Ng is the author of three novels, Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts.
Her first novel, Everything I Never Told You (2014), was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Notable Book of 2014, Amazon’s #1 Best Book of 2014, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen publications. Everything I Never Told You was also the winner of the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the ALA’s Alex Award.
Her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere (2017) was a #1 New York Times bestseller, a #1 Indie Next bestseller, and Amazon’s Best Fiction Book of 2017. It was named a best book of the year by over 25 publications, the winner of the Ohioana Award and the Goodreads Readers Choice Award 2017 in Fiction, and has spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list. Little Fires Everywhere has been adapted as a limited series on Hulu, starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington.
Her third novel, Our Missing Hearts, was published in October 2022.
Celeste grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio. She graduated from Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan (now the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan). Her fiction and essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, and many other publications, and she is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors.
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