Do You like book Inheritance (2005)?
Meg Storey (Editor, Tin House Books): In preparation for a panel I will moderate at the Tin House Summer Writer’s Workshop, I am reading Lan Samantha Chang’s first novel, Inheritance. While my reading could be considered “homework,” it’s homework that I don’t want to put down. The story of Junan and her younger sister, Yinan, opens in pre-revolution, 1930s China, as their mother, who has not borne her husband a son and worries he will take another wife, commits suicide. Chang’s quiet yet vivid prose beautifully depicts not only a time and setting I knew little about but also the characters and the conflicts and challenges they face, particularly the female characters, as their country changes.
—TinHouseBooks
liked this much more than i thought i would upon starting. happily avoids annoying writing or amy tan cliche territory. chang's writing is subtle and complex without struggling to appear so. in fact, her writing is disarmingly easy to read, drawing you in. even though she plays around with point of view and the book had great flow. she did that show dont tell thing in terms of story beautifully while being relatively clear (my head wasn't even completely in the game) about the historical context and events.
—Janet
Chang handles the slippery theme of loyalty when personal desire clashes with commitments to family, culture, or nation. Her characters are real in that they fail to resolve the betrayals they generate, and yet they each succeed in following their individual choices, each paying a heavy price. In spite of personal infidelities along with the disruptions of war and political upheaval that disperses the family over five generations into China, Taiwan, and America, the family holds together by thin threads. Told from the point of view of Hong, the daughter of Junan, it is primarily a story of her mother and her aunt, the two sisters who love the same man, who is Hong's father, a Nationalist Army general, a war hero, and a traitor. Like her father, Hong too follows her heart. Yet, it is never quite her story that takes center stage. In this sense, Chang, depicts the power of the family to overshadow the individual, even when living in the throes of war or in another culture in another land.
—Sandra
