Review : The Year She Left Us by Kathryn Ma

Posted by on June 19, 2014 1:56 am in 3.5 stars reads | 4 comments

the year she elft usThe Year She Left Us by Kathryn Ma
Pages : 336
Genre : Fiction
Stand alone
My Rating : 3.5/5

About the Book  :

The Kong women are in crisis. A disastrous trip to visit her “home” orphanage in China has plunged eighteen-year-old Ari into a self-destructive spiral. Her adoptive mother, Charlie, a lawyer with a great heart, is desperate to keep her daughter safe. Meanwhile, Charlie must endure the prickly scrutiny of her beautiful, Bryn Mawr educated mother, Gran—who, as the daughter of a cultured Chinese doctor, came to America to survive Mao’s Revolution—and her sister, Les, a brilliant judge with a penchant to rule over everyone’s lives.

As they cope with Ari’s journey of discovery and its aftermath, the Kong women will come face to face with the truths of their lives—four powerful intertwining stories of accomplishment, tenacity, secrets, loneliness, and love. Beautifully illuminating the bonds of family and blood, The Year She Left Usexplores the promise and pain of adoption, the price of assimilation and achievement, the debt we owe to others, and what we owe ourselves.

My Thoughts :

The Year She Left Us was certainly a departure from my most recent reading; there are no magic tricks or demons roaming around in this novel. Instead, we find ourselves completely immersed into the complicated dynamics of a family made of very real (meaning: flawed and complex) characters.

Two things really stood out for me in this novel. The first, as already mentioned, is the characters; the book alternates narrative voices and this gives us the opportunity to get to know them all better. While I never felt close enough to feel like I could relate to them, I appreciated how different they were and how their experience with adoption offered different point-of-views.

The second aspect that stood out was the writing. Kathryn Ma has a very distinct style; it’s sort of short, with a very repetitive pace. Many of her paragraphs were concise and rich in information, reading almost as a series of short stories. It took me a while to get used to it, because the writing felt less like it was flowing through the pages, and more like an exercise in style.

I think this is part of the reason I had a hard time connecting with Ari and Charlie, or Gran and Les, and what took away some of my enjoyment from what was otherwise a complicated, human and intriguing story.

In the end, I did enjoy The Year She Left Us. Considering its themes of family, adoption, relationship and estrangement, I do wish I would have had more of an emotional connection to the characters; but I do believe that under its striking cover, the book offers a deep and intricate story of family and most of all, identity.

The Year She Left Us is available for sale now! Thanks to TLC Book Tour for generously inviting me to participate to this book tour!

4 Comments

  1. Hm, you’ve made me very curious about Ma’s writing style.

  2. It sounds like there is a deep current to this book that I would enjoy being caught up in.

    Thanks for being a part of the tour!

  3. I like books in which I feel an emotional connection with the characters so I might just pass on this one. Nice review.

  4. The blurb you provided about the book reminds me a bit of The Joy Luck Club. I do tend to really enjoy this type of sparse yet poignant style of writing. I also love the topics explored in books like this. I’m thinking this might be something I should pick up.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Kathryn Ma, author of The Year She Left Us, on tour May 2014 | TLC Book Tours - […] Thursday, June 19th: The Infinite Shelf […]

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

%d bloggers like this: