@ Celeste Ng has new book coming out

[hellomarriedlife]

I know that this isn't the book board, but this is the author of "Little Fires Everywhere," and she was involved in the "Bad Art Friend" controversy last year. The subject of this book seems relevant to current events.

From her author website:

@


Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture” in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.

Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.

Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can pretend to ignore the most searing injustice. It’s a story about the power—and limitations—of art to create change, the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact.

[wildrice]

Sounds like a good book - I'll put it on my reading list! I've really liked both of her other books that I've read.

[livinitup]

Underground libraries!

I am totally in. This sounds wonderful. I just wish it was more fictional than we are currently experiencing in real life.

[Gato]

Review by Stephen King in the New York Times:

www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/books/review/celeste-ng-our-missing-hearts.html

[dancingirl21]

My SIL is a bookseller at a local indie bookstore so she gets advance copies of many books. She already read this and is preemptively saying it might be her favorite of 2022.