Our Missing Hearts
Celeste Ng
Our Missing Hearts
Celeste Ng
Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old. He doesn't know what happened to her - only that her books have been banned - and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him.
Then one day, Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, and soon 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 heroic librarians, and finally to New York City, where he will finally learn the truth about what happened to his mother, and what the future holds for them both.
Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It's about the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and the power of art to create change.
Review
Tye Cattanach
Anyone familiar with the work of Celeste Ng knows to expect complex and heartfelt family stories cleverly intertwined with thought-provoking commentary about race and socio-economic differences. The premise for Our Missing Hearts seems simple. The national security law PACT has taken complete control of America, protecting ‘good’ and ‘loyal’ patriots from the ‘evil’ influence of China. Immediately apparent to the reader is the irony of a country so desperate to eschew and erase any Asian influence, it implements a tyrannical government organisation that strongly resembles Mao’s Communist China.
Bird and his father Ethan live a quiet life together. They do not speak of Bird’s mother, a radical poet on the run from PACT, whose words incite insurrection. They keep their heads down, they attract no attention. Until one day, Bird receives a postcard covered in hand-drawn cats that changes everything.
Our Missing Hearts is a breathtaking novel about the demise of human civilisation, the tyranny of government, and the myriad, dangerous ways in which fear can control human behaviour. It is about racism and racial conflict, human violence, the removal of children as a means of controlling parents, migrant families, capitalism, classism, cancel culture, greed and ignorance. It is about all the ways we look away when we shouldn’t.
But it is also a magical, gorgeously crafted story about hope, love, mothers, fathers, children and friends. It is about librarians using books to ferry secret messages despite the enormity of the risk involved. It is about friendship and courage, art as protest and libraries as safe spaces for all. It is about the incredible power of story to move people, to provoke empathy and preserve history. It is about what is possible when we don’t look away.
It is impossible to review this book in 300 words. Please, read it.
Tye Cattanach is a schools and libraries specialist at Readings.
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