Our Missing Hearts - Book Review

Our Missing Hearts

Celeste Ng

4.8 stars

Celeste Ng’s telling of a dystopian world that could be just around our corner was frightening, poetic (like her character), heart-warming and a warning of what could await us.
 
Margaret is gone because of the stand she chooses to take against the ways of the government and her son Bird (Noah) is searching for her through the memories he has. Abandonment can also mean heart-breaking love.

 To let her be alone with her grief, or whatever heavier thing she’d put on top to hold it down.

The world is punishing of Asian individuals, and ‘staying unnoticed is how you survive’. But Bird has to leave the relative safety of his life and search for her.

I am not a strictly religious person but the choice of name Noah which is changed to Bird, did not escape me. I am surprised that other reviewers have not mentioned it.

If you are a lover of libraries, the dedication of librarians, and the magic of the order of books that allows you to find them, you will be thrilled as I was on the role that libraries play in this book.

Although, there is some ambiguity of what the Crisis actually entailed, our recent pandemic gives us eyes to relate to the situation. The distrust of individuals, and the isolation are two factors that prompt Bird to navigate his way to the city to track down his mother. 

Through Bird's thoughts we see his walking journey through many districts, you can feel his feet on the pavement as he notices the buildings, the languages spoken by people on the sidewalks, neighbourhoods with no trees, and then bigger trees, and stores only selling silk scarves. This passage through time was reminiscent of the same kind of telling in films such as Notting Hill and also very effective.

The city described is not a pretty city, and the stench of it is well thought out and will fill your nostrils.

In a reunion written beautifully, his love for his mother transcends the loss he has felt through her absence. It brought me back to an earlier part of the book which was explained with the description of a fallen tree and counting the rings: peel back enough layers and they explain everything.
 
If you can bring yourself to dismiss the unidentified parts of the government’s workings, the simplicity of clichés around race, and the lack of quotation marks, all minor I feel in the grand scheme of this story telling, you could love this book. It is a love story for a better world. 

Read it like a poet, and it makes sense. However alarming its possibility.

#Canadian, Janika Oza is providing me with her debut novel   A History of Burning as my next read.


 

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