I thought Celeste Ng’s previous novels, Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You, were brilliant reads. I was really looking forward to her next. Our Missing Hearts does have themes in common, such as the experiences of Asian Americans and the dynamics of families, but it’s something a bit different because it’s almost… dystopian. I hesitate to call it dystopian, because although it seems to be set in the very near future or possibly a parallel universe, it’s clearly based on current political situations and past social history.
The first half of the story follows a 12-year-old boy, Bird, in a version of the US where a Crisis occurred, blamed on China, resulting in racism against anything Asian. The legislation is called PACT and it even allows children to be taken away from parents who protest against the law or who do anything deemed unpatriotic. Bird lives with his father; his mother left to protect him, after her poetry became an inspiration for protesters. Bird starts to find clues about his mother, eventually putting himself in danger to seek her.
This was an impressively crafted novel which had much thought put into it. I found it depressing but was interested to see what happened to Bird. However, I struggled after the halfway point when there is a lot of description of recent history and the story of his mother. I would have preferred flashbacks or other more immediate ways of narrating this part of the story, rather than his mother reciting what sounds like an essay. The book unfortunately exhibits one of my pet hates, the absence of quotation marks in dialogue. I don’t understand why authors do it.
I feel this is an important book which I’m glad to have read, but I didn’t enjoy it.
Published in 2022.