Bone

Leila,  the first of three daughters born to a Chinese-American family in San Francisco's Chinatown, narrates the story of her family's grief.  Leila tells her story backwards, and each successive chapter touches on an event that occurred before the former.  The effect is a slow unraveling - events that are distant memories in the beginning are told in detail in the middle, and have not yet occurred in the innocent time of the end chapters.

Central to Leila's story is her middle sister Ona's suicide.  This is a story about what holds this fractured and reconstituted family together - blood, duty and tradition, yes, but also choice.  Choices of commitment: Leon's choice to love Leila as a daughter;  Leila's decision to stay in Chinatown;  Mason's choice to be a member of Leila's family, but not his own.  And choices to disassociate: Leila's father's choice to leave; Nina's move to New York; and of course, Ona's choice to jump.  The themes of culture, community, and balance between two worlds, expected of a story about an immigrant family, painted a darker picture (cover commentary calls its "gritty") compared to stories about similar topics, focusing on splintered relations, poverty, and bad luck.

But what resonates the most is Fae Myenne Ng's concise, stark writing style.  She tells the tale in sparse, plain language peppered with accents of sizzling imagery.

Walking into the factory felt like walking into the cable-car barn.  Every machine was running at high speed: the Singers boomed, the button machines clicked.  The shop vibrated like a big engine.  Everything blended: oil and metal and the eye-stinging heat of the presses.  The ladies pushed their endurance, long hours and then longer nights, as they strained to slip one more seam under the stamping needle.

Some of her phrases were evocatively poetic, and parts were extremely poignant and moving.  But perhaps because the story was told backwards, I was left wishing for a shock or surprise that never materialized, or a completion of the arc of the story that we never got quite back to.  Not a flawless book, but a refreshing one.