Bird’s mom was a poet who read him fairy stories and taught him to work in the garden. Now she is gone, and Bird lives alone with his father, who says that Bird must now be called Noah. His father used to be an etymology professor, but now he shelves books in the university library so that they can share a dorm suite. Bird doesn’t understand why they had to move out of their house.
Margaret was pregnant with Bird shortly after The Crisis, when no one had work and people scrounged through abandoned stores and trash cans for food and clothing. Everything was better now, though, and everyone was patriotic. Very carefully patriotic. Margaret and her new husband were living in a rosy glow with a little house and a baby on the way, so they were able to ignore the posters in all of the shop windows about PACT, the Preserving American Culture and Traditions act. After all, it was targeted toward anti-American Asians, and they were good Americans, even though Margaret’s parents were from China.
Ng’s newest novel is frightening not just as dystopian fiction, but because so many of her details can be seen in our culture today. Having survived a slow-rolling crisis not long ago, we can see how easy it would be for a desperate nation to accept unthinkable levels of authoritarian government, and once that regime is in place, how difficult it would be to loosen its grip on power. We can all flatter ourselves that we would resist tyranny to the death until the authorities play their ultimate card: they will take away your children. Everyone in Ng’s world will give up any of their rights if they can recover their missing hearts.
I almost hesitated to read this novel because I worried that it could not live up to Little Fires Everywhere, which I loved and reviewed here. Our Missing Hearts is every bit as good, although completely different. It doesn’t hurt that it is a love letter to librarians, who play a heroic role throughout. The audiobook is read by Lucy Liu, whose calm voice is often filled with emotion whether she reads from Bird’s or Margaret’s perspective. Celeste Ng reads the foreword and the epilogue.
A dystopian novel that slowly reveals its shocking details, Our Missing Hearts packs an emotional punch and will leave you shaken. Highly recommended.
Disclaimer: I listened to an audiobook of this novel. Opinions expressed are solely my own and may not reflect those of my employer or anyone else.
On July 21, 2012, I posted my first blog post. I wasn’t even sure what a blog was at the time, and one of my first stories was about the death of my dryer. After a while, a friend of mine advised me that most people enjoy blogs with pictures, so I had to figure out how to take and transfer photos, and we were off to the races. Over the course of ten years, EatReadSleep has reached 141 countries, with many tens of thousands of readers, although the lack of enthusiasm in Greenland is tragic.
The country with the greatest number of hits, of course, is the United States, followed by Canada. Rounding out the top ten are, in order, Germany, United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, France, India, the Philippines, and Spain. As you can see, all of the European countries have logged in at some time, usually often, and in the last couple of months, a reader from Ireland often logs in before I wake up in the morning. I have regular Russian readers, and the People’s Republic of China has found ERS 27 times! Some of the interesting countries that have only found ERS once include St. Kitts & Nevis, Brunei, Yemen, New Caladonia, Curaçao, Zimbabwe, and Guernsey. I have really improved my geography skills!
EatReadSleep started out as an everything blog because I missed writing so much when I went to work fulltime as a librarian. Turns out that working full time and trying to keep up with the latest books made it impossible to write at any decent level, so I created a separate blog in 2016 called TheReaderWrites, but I rarely use it, unfortunately. After that, ERS became all about book reviews, which is a good thing, since I had started writing about politics in 2016 for some reason that we all know, and that’s just not good for my blood pressure. I will retire in a year or so, after which I hope to write more stories and memoirs on TRW.
Are you dying to know which posts were the most popular? The first answer is disappointing from a data point of view: it’s just the home page and archives, which means people tuning in and just scrolling, which is awesome, actually. I’ve had tens of thousands of people doing just that. I have a confession to make: it was years before I knew to put individual URLs on the Facebook posts for each review. I just put the URL of the blog itself, so many of those Home Page/Archives hits are just from that! Hopefully, readers know how to use the search bar and are finding the posts they want.
As far as the most popular title, it’s surprising: Echo, by Pam Muñoz Ryan. I have a feeling that a lot of school librarians and teachers give out the web address to their students, not just for this children’s fiction title, but for many of them! Sometimes I seem to have a run on a particular children’s title for days on end. “Hm, thirty people read the review of Wishtree, by Katherine Applegate, today. Oh, and yesterday, too.” Of the top twenty posts, eleven of them are for children or teens. Four are spiritual books, and several are my own stories.
Blackmoor is one of the early Proper Romances by Shadow Mountain.
The third most popular post makes me laugh every time. I have had thousands of hits for the post “What Is a Proper Romance?” It is written about the Shadow Mountain adult series called Proper Romance, and I have searched their website fruitlessly to see if they have a link to EatReadSleep. I have no idea if people are truly looking for those books or if they are trying to inject virtue into their love lives or those of their teenagers, but I get at least a few reads of that 2015 piece every day.
As I noted above, before 2016, I had written posts that were not book reviews, and some of the most popular with readers and most important to me are the series of posts about my neighbors’ struggle to change North Carolina law concerning cannabidiol, the non-hallucinogenic oil from marijuana. Their daughter, Zora, has intractable epilepsy, and this natural drug had been shown to prevent seizures. I am happy to say that Zora is now a teenager and is living a much healthier life. Furthermore, North Carolina laws about medical marijuana continue to evolve.
Other popular non-book posts include my own— let’s say it— fabulous recipe for low-carb chocolate chip cookies and related cookbook and diet posts. The story about “Southern Guys and Knives” also gets regular hits all the time.
The Best of EatReadSleep series!!
While it is as impossible to choose my favorite pieces as it would be to choose your favorite children (I can’t relate; I have an only child), I want to put a few titles in each category, just for your entertainment and enlightenment. Sort of a “Best of EatReadSleep” so far. Today, we’ll start with adult fiction, with more genres in the coming weeks.
Favorite Adult Novels
Many Americans read mostly fiction, from thrillers to romances, but I have to know for sure that I will love a novel before I crack it open. This is not a problem, since I work in the selection department of a large library system, where I am bombarded by publisher marketing all day long. Plus, the adult fiction selector works just a few feet away, and she keeps us up to date.
Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell. My favorite novel of Spring, 2021
I can definitely say that in 2021, my two favorite novels were Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell, in the spring and Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr, in the fall. They were both phenomenal and entirely different from one another. This year, Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built is the best novel so far. Both Chambers and O’Farrell have new books coming out in the next couple of months, and I am looking forward to them. Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See should be on everyone’s “Books I Need to Read Before I Die” list.
The Personal Librarian and others by Marie Benedict. I’m a librarian, and I’ve been to this library, so of course, but Marie Benedict is bringing many women’s stories to life.
Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng. I can’t speak for the tv series, but this novel made me identify with someone who is nothing like me.
Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens. It’s been a bestseller ever since it came out for very good reason. Let’s hope the movie lives up to it. One of my lifetime favorites.
The Almost Sisters, by Joshilyn Jackson. Most people know her for Gods in Alabama, but I like this one so much more.
The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead. Historical fiction with a soupçon of scifi/fantasy.
The Half-Drowned King and sequels, by Linnea Hartsuyker. This series is so underrated. It’s historical fiction, but if you like Game of Thrones, you will like Linnea Hartsuyker.
Uprootedand Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik. Classic fantasy. Grimm’s fairy tales for grownups.
________________________
Stay tuned for more from “The Best of EatReadSleep”, including faith-based nonfiction, books for teens and kids, anti-racist reads, and more!
Shaker Heights was founded on rules and order, and Elena Richardson is one of its most fervent native daughters. From the time she was a little girl, she had planned her life carefully, firm in her beliefs of right and wrong, always following what she thought was correct. She married well, had four children—two boys and two girls, maintained a small-town journalistic career that allowed her to put her family first, and made sure that she and her family could hold up their heads as models of success and respectability. When Mia Warren and her teenaged daughter, Pearl, arrived in town, Mrs. Richardson generously allowed them to live in her rental property at reduced rates. Nothing warmed her heart more than to do good deeds for the deserving poor.
Mia is an artist. Whenever she gets an idea for a project, she settles into a town, takes photographs, turns them into the vision in her head, ships them off to her agent, and packs up again. This time, though, she has promised Pearl that they would stay longer for her sake. She is surprised and uneasy when her daughter seems to fall in love with the Richardsons’ wealthy, bourgeois lifestyle. They have all the material things and experiences of privileged teens. Pearl is even thrilled to watch The Jerry Springer show on the couch with them every afternoon. The Richardsons are teaching Pearl to be everything that Mia never wanted.
Under the polished surface of Shaker Heights’ upstanding community, though, there are secrets, and as a journalist, Mrs. Richardson has the means to ferret them out. It is not right, after all, that the person one helped out so long ago does not consider herself to be in one’s debt forever. It is not right that newcomers, and especially foreigners, should believe that they have the same rights as one of the fine citizens of Shaker Heights. However, even though Mrs. Richardson can measure out her breakfast cereal every day, she cannot get a grip on her vexing youngest daughter, Izzy, who seems to be completely dazzled by that bohemian artist, Mia.
Celeste Ng writes a story of two generations in a rigid little world colliding with outside ideas and sojourners. Mothers and children are locked together with iron bonds that they simultaneously tighten and push against. Izzy is struggling to break free of her mother’s control and her siblings’ scorn, but her rebellion is limited to a young girl’s resources. Those resources turn out to be incredibly powerful. The suffocating community produces tragic decisions and secrets kept locked inside. There is no redemption here, no confession or forgiveness. As Mia tells one of the teens, there is just pain that you must carry.
I loved this novel for two reasons. The first is that I adore deep explorations of the artistic process. I have taken enough art classes to know that I cannot draw, and I have struggled through enough music lessons to know that I am not gifted. However, I am perfectly happy to be a devotee. Stories of artists passionate about their craft entrance me, so Mia’s evolution as a photographer, and then as someone who used photography to create meaningful works of art, was absorbing and fascinating. I rejoiced with every hint of her success.
Secondly, though, I empathize so closely with anyone trying to be free of others’ control. As a compliant child, I sometimes feel as if I have spent my adult life trying to escape the Mrs. Richardsons of the world, breaking through the walls of all those little boxes. And there are so many boxes! There were scenes in the novel where I could barely breathe, waiting for someone—anyone!— to fight back and triumph.
Although the ending is realistically complicated, there is hope that everyone has grown, and that the small steps down a new road— a road that was not even on the map before— will continue until each person finds freedom: freedom to let go, freedom to change, freedom to burn it all down and start again.
Highly recommended.
Disclaimer: I read an advance reader copy of this book, although it is available right now. Opinions expressed are solely my own and may not reflect those of my employer or anyone else.
Celeste Ng writes a story of two generations in a rigid little world colliding with outside ideas and sojourners. Mothers and children are locked together with iron bonds that they simultaneously tighten and push against. Izzy is struggling to break free of her mother’s control and her siblings’ scorn, but her rebellion is limited to a young girl’s resources. Those resources turn out to be incredibly powerful. The suffocating community produces tragic decisions and secrets kept locked inside. There is no redemption here, no confession or forgiveness. As Mia tells one of the teens, there is just pain that you must carry.
EatReadSleep 