Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng - Review
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- Опубліковано 29 сер 2024
- A review of Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng.
A novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear.
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 pulled 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.
I read this shortly after it was released and it was a 5 star read for me. I'm one of those readers who is okay with slow, gentle books, so that didn't bother me. I do think that *when* I read it had a lot to do with my enjoyment of it.
Totally. I can 100 percent see readers loving the pace of this book.
I have 100 pages left to read in this novel and so far, it is slow and rather uneventful. I really enjoyed Little Fires Everywhere though. I will check out this video in 100 pages. You have one stellar hat collection and an excellent channel.
I just want to say I've been looking for a book tuber that I love for a long time and I've finally found one. Thanks for everything.
Wow! Thanks so much. Really appreciate you taking the time to say that. Comments like this make my day! Thanks for watching and supporting. Hope you're good.
Quite light on plot is a perfect description of this novel. A subtle novel on fascism and racism with a wisp of a story and a melodramatic ending. The characters did not work for me either. You were very kind in the review. 2 Stars for me.
I try not to be mean when I can help it :)
I’ll be honest, I’ve been in a massive reading slump for a couple of years now being focused on academia. This book really got me eager to read again. I think if I’d been comparing it to 100 other books I’d read this year I’d probably also give it a three star rating. But for the ease of getting back into reading and rediscovering my love for books, I have to give it five stars.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
1 star goes for ease of reading. It’s not complicated. The writing style is clear and you always know what’s happening.
1 star goes for creativity, Celeste is incredibly good at bringing scenes to life with similes and metaphors.
1 star goes for good storytelling. Celeste gives us some simple but interesting foreshadowing in this book, some of it is predictable but not any less fun to read.
1 star goes to character development. Celeste really tells you who these characters are and their internal monologue is written out for you. How they feel about others and themselves is clear and well written. She does get a bit repetitive sometimes but it’s forgivable.
The final star is for background. Celeste really paints a picture of how things got to where they are, you really feel like these things happened organically through the minds of humans desperate to put the fault of their pains on someone else via means of scapegoating.
I loved Everything I Never Told You and found Little Fires Everywhere very compelling but I had issues with it. Have yet to read this but it’s been on my shelves since it came out last year. I think I’m afraid of not liking it. I enjoyed listening to your thoughts 😊
I appreciate your brief and honest review of this novel. I wanted to love it more than I did, based on her previous works. You should really give Little Fires Everywhere a go (loved it). As for Our Missing Hearts I also gave it a 3/5 primarily for the lack of character connection and anticlimax ending. Sigh
We read this for my book club in April. I really disliked this book, and the lack of quotations was what ruined it for me. I ended it (parts 2 and 3) with the Audiobook due to the quotations, which flowed better, but I still did not like the book overall. I thought Part 1 was better than the latter parts. It was definitely different from Ng's other work.
Hi there, just an idea as it is your channel, but I think it would be great if you did a general guide to good literary fiction spanning say the last few decades or whatever time period, what do you think? You would be the perfect guide. Regards David
Hey David! Great idea. I’ll put that one on the back burner. With my current work life schedule I struggle to put together one - two single book reviews a week. But I do have more time over the summer so may put something like this together.