This is an interesting read about modern China. I did not knwo before the author, but reading it make me want to look for more of his books.

2★
I read only the first couple of stories and couldn't get interested at all. As people are fond of saying when breaking up, "It's not you, it's me", and perhaps this is the case. It's me.

However, I'm very fond of short stories and generally pretty accepting of different styles, so I don't know exactly what didn't appeal to me. They seem to wander aimlessly, and I say "seem" and "aimlessly" to show that perhaps I missed the point while others will find a message. Scenes and descriptions were well done, but not enough to keep me reading.

Not for me, I'm afraid, but thanks to NetGalley and Regent Press for a preview copy.

I really enjoyed reading this, the style, tone, and flow were brilliant. The kind of writing I would expect to find in high-end literary magazines. Although it's a collection of short stories, it feels more like vibrant snapshots of the lives of the characters. A beautiful photo album made of words instead of photographs.

These short stories had a massive range of ideas, from the everyday of having to deal with a love triangle to the more extreme like a government employee keeping watch over a journalist who stepped over the line. The language was simply beautiful, meaning there were several quotes that I wished I had written down because they hit me hard, and all the stories took on a slightly otherworldly air. This worked well in places, like the stories with ghosts in them or the story about the researcher, but in other places, it left me feeling slightly distant to the story and to the characters.

I enjoyed the stories about mistaken identity, the love triangle as well as the author's insistence on knowing the truth had led her to become distant from her family.

However, this is definitely a book I would get a physical copy for because the ebook was strangely formatted in places, likely not helped because it was an ARC, which made it quite hard to read. I would definitely recommend it though, four stars!

Perhaps not as engaging as I had hope but I think this is on me. There's a tone to each of these long-ish short stories distancing themselves from my intellect leaving me cold to much of their content. However, that is not to say these aren't well-crafted stories and I think a more attune reader will find them as pleasing as any Carver.

With this enthralling collection of short stories, Ho Lin delves into many contradictions between the East and the West as well as how we recall history, crafting herself in literary prowess!

"She hates the David Bowie song...How could anyone think of that as a beautiful Chinese girl?"

So thinks May Lee, the exotic dancer whose story is told in the eponymous opening story of the collection "China Girl," whose characters move, often ambiguously, between East and West, belonging to neither and both. San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Beijing all appear as part of the same cultural and geographical continuum, as well as little seaside towns in which human and political tragedies play out.

The stories of "China Girl" are delicately yet vigorously crafted--each one shows meticulous construction, with subtle details and close attention given to the characters' internal states, but with the inclusion of plenty of earthy action as well: people eat, meet, break up, fight, die, and make love (or fail to make love) in vignettes that suggest something beyond the beginning, middle, and end of the story in question.

And in fact, while I would hesitate to label this collection as "metaphysical," "visionary," or "otherworldly" exactly, there certainly are ghosts, of both the literal and figurative kind, who add a layer of complexity to the situations the characters must negotiate. Like a delicious meal made up of multiple dishes, this story collection is rich in multiple flavors without being overwhelming, and well worth reading for anyone looking for some contemporary literary/multicultural short fiction.

My thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

A collection of short stories that's worth reading! The author takes the reader from China to the United States delving into brutal aspects of their lives from the young to the old, royalty and citizens and in doing so weaves a heart-breaking narrative. I particularly took to three stories: Ghost Wife, Litany-Eulogy, and National Holiday.
There's a phrase that haunted me to certainty "When nothing is left of my body but ashes, even then, my love and hate will always burn."
I'm grateful to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review and I'm certain I'll find myself going back to Litany,Eulogy because it delves on accounts of such grief and brutality that I could not help but wonder at how fickle life must have been for the characters reliving the memories and images they wished dead.