I loved this story; the magical realism that blended in with a more traditional Manchu style of storytelling. The story of a family and the mother daughter relationship which we see over multiple generational narratives.
It was lyrical, beautiful, heartbreaking and eye opening.

A woman goes back home to deal with some loss and regret. I thought that this book was well written but I wasn't always drawn into the story. Something happens to the main character which I had a hard time taking seriously, but otherwise I would say it's still a book worth reading.

Review: The Light of Eternal Spring by Angel Di Zheng

Aimee is a photographer. She spends her life taking photos and making art because she hopes to fall into a photo again, like she did when she was 8-years old and discovered her love for New York. Upon discovering her mother has died, she and her husband, David, decide to travel to her childhood town in China, Eternal Spring, and what unfolds is a beautiful and heart wrenching story or reconnection with family and an exploration of identity.

Through the story, Aimee’s artistic perspective is intertwined with the memories of her mother’s stories creating an introspective journey into her identity, the fabrication of memory, and the feeling of disconnection that occurs when you feel you belong in more than one place and with more than one family - and also how you can create something new and inspiring if you take the time to embrace all parts of your identity.

From the beginning of Aimee’s journey, I was hooked. This short novel packs a punch of emotions and I admit, I’m still thinking about the stories within the story and how they connect to other aspects in Aimee’s journey. It is a fantastic delve into literary fiction and the difficult reconciliation of identity for immigrants.

Thank you to Penguin Random House and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC. The opinions in this review are my own.

The Light of Eternal Spring by Angel Di Zhang is a gripping debut.

When Amy learns that her mother has passed away in Eternal Spring, a village in China, she is overcome with emotion. It doesn’t help that the person Amy asks to translate her sister’s letter from Manchu to English claims that Amy’s mother died of a broken heart.

Amy’s remorse for everything left unsaid and incomplete is palpable in the pages of this debut. Amy is estranged from her family, that much is clear but the why and how is discovered along her and her husband’s journey to Eternal Spring where Amy hopes to be present for her mother’s funeral and make up for lost time with her family.

Angel Di Zhang’s weaving of magical elements in this tale of familial love, warring identifies and the power of art is masterful. The story is a reminder of what we leave behind in the pursuit of our passions – our families, our culture, our ability to see clearly. It is a love letter to immigrants everywhere, ones battling with two halves of their whole self. Above all, it is the sincerest portrait of the relationship between mothers and daughters and the hardest part, the letting go.

Recommended to fans of literary fiction everywhere!

Thank you to Angel Di Zhang for an advanced e-copy of her book. I enjoyed it wholeheartedly!

“We are all who we are in this moment, but also who we have been in the past”.

A beautifully written debut novel from Angel di Zhang that tells the story of Wu Aimee, a photographer living in New York who receives news from her sister that her mother has died. Weaving memories from the past with Aimee’s journey back home, this book’s poignant exploration of grief captivated me from start to finish.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book! The idea of falling into a photograph is such an amazing visual that I was imagining what it would be like if I could do that. The author's writing style is so beautiful, I was hooked into the story immediately. What a wonderful debut novel, well done!

The Light of Eternal Spring grabs your heart from the beginning to end as we follow Aimee on her journey home after a decade having received a letter stating her mother had died.

It is not an easy journey for Aimee.

You will cry with Aimee as you feel her grief and in her own way says goodbye to her mother who she has not spoken to in those 10 years.

The story goes back to Aimee's childhood which gives you more of an understanding.

The Light of Eternal Spring is a book about mothers and daughters, family, grief and healing.

This book will no doubt be a Book Club Choice for many.

Highly recommend you get your copy and settle in for an emotional read that you will not forget anytime soon.

I cant wait to see where Angel Di Zhang takes us with her next book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an unforgettable read.

I was drawn in to Amy's story right from the beginning. I felt her grief when her mother died and she couldn't connect with her family. I was captivated by her journey to heal herself and say good-bye to her mother. A wonderful story about life, family and mothers and daughters. Thank you Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for the advanced copy.

Firstly, I'd like to say thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Right from the first line of this book, I was captured. Angel Di Zhang has an amazing way with words, and just as Aimee falls into her photos, I fell right into this story. I had to double check that this was a debut novel, and it's an absolutely fabulous way to come out of the gate.

After Aimee gets the news that her mother has died, we're taken on two journeys with her - one present, going back to China, reconnecting with her family, and seeing what her home village has become in the present day, and one through her memories of her mother and growing up.

Detailed and elaborate descriptions bring the story to life without being overly flowy, and the pictures painted by the author really allowed me to feel as if I was seeing the story play out in front of me.

A real light, dreamy book with exquisite writing, but heavy subjects.
Sort of reads like a fever dream, deep relationships are exposed about what parents want for you, what you want for yourself and dealing with leaving home.
I really liked the journey back to Eternal Spring, China and the blending of East and West.
I will give this 4/5 stars!

This was a beautiful book. I cried in the end, and I enjoyed the sort of magical whimsy that came with Aimee and her struggle to reconnect with the roots she left behind.

Also, David?? A precious bean. The fact that he wrote all those post-it notes and surprised her… That was romantic as heck. I cried like a baby reading that part.

It was short and sweet. Absolute treasure.

I loved The Light Of Eternal Spring. There was nothing I would have changed, nothing I wish was different. This book was exactly what it needed to be.
Aimee receives a letter in New York from her sister in China telling her their mother, who she hasn’t spoken to in 10 years has died. Boarding a plane with her husband she returns to her home to a less then welcoming reception. Switching between Aimee’s growing up and the present. I love books about families that show the intricacies and complexity that come with loving the people we are related to, and Angela Di Zang does it spectacularly in her debut novel. Hitting shelves April 24 2023 this is definitely one I recommend. Thank you to Netgallery and Penguin Random House for letting me review an advanced copy.

[arc review]
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
The Light of Eternal Spring releases April 25, 2023

Set in both New York and China, and told in past and present narratives, this story is one that mingles the interspersion of passion, self-discovery, love, family, and grief.

Living as a photographer in New York, Amy receives a letter from her younger sister informing her that their mother died of a broken heart. Unable to properly get in touch with her family overseas, her husband David convinces them to travel back to her village called Eternal Spring, in hopes of attending a funeral and gaining some closure.
But her welcome home after many years away isn’t as warm-welcomed as she was expecting from Westernized standards. Amy has returned to a village that has drastically changed — one that has evolved and grown without her. Has her family harboured resentment towards Amy for seeking out and fulfilling her ambitions, even if it meant putting physical distance between them to achieve it?

This story was effortlessly immersive from the get go. Well rounded and developed characters brought forth bittersweet humour and reflection. I love how we got backstory from Amy’s childhood and really experienced where her passion and intrigue for photography first bloomed.

Partly interwoven with magical realism, we see the act of Amy’s camera lenses producing blurry photos right after she’s learned of her mother’s death, as well as her sporadic moments of falling into photos, and a sudden onset of blindness after an overwhelming rush of emotion stemming from grief.

A well crafted and tightly knit plot brings this full circle by reconnecting family, seeing things in a new light, and bridging together two separate entities — “To be whole, I needed both the place I came from and the place I chose.”

The Light of Eternal Spring is a stunning debut from a new voice in Canadian and Asian Lit — I can’t wait to see what Angel writes next!

Also, how cute is the cover which also resembles film strip from a camera?!

I liked the way we bounced between Aimee's childhood and the present. Getting child-Aimee's perspective on things during the flashbacks was a good way of getting some insight into the decisions Aimee has made in her life. I also liked the folktales that her mother told, they were nice little breaks from Aimee dealing with her grief and trying to reconnect with her family. It felt like these folktales balanced the story well.

This book takes place mostly in North China a region I never read about and it was great to discover it landscape and mythology. However I had a little trouble getting in the lyrical part it's just not my genre...But the contemporary part was more to my like and well written.

“Cinematic” is an apt description for this novel as we follow Amy, a photographer in New York, back to her hometown, a northeastern village in China called Eternal Spring. The reason she’s back is because her mother has passed and she must process her grief while grappling with her long separation from her family and the culture she grew up with.

The story has an ethereal quality to it as Amy’s memories are filled with tales that her mother used to tell. And so, her grief is explored through vignettes of her past, almost as if you’re flipping through a photo album. The feelings are there, but sometimes the memories lapse. I like this fractured way of exploring grief, where nothing feels quite real. In a lot of ways, this story captures the surrealness of the experience of grief. The story also has some magical elements that capture this essence.

On a specific note, I love the photography references in this book. I’m probably a bit biased, but it was fun when Amy gets into the details of her photo taking.

I also loved that Amy is Manchu and the setting is in northern China. China is far from a monolith and it’s cool to see non Cantonese representation among the Chinese diaspora in North American literature.

The only thing I didn’t love (although I admit I’m very biased) is that I don’t feel like I got enough of an explanation for Amy’s love of New York. I’m sorry New Yorkers, I’ve been and I just don’t really see the magic of it? At this point I just get a little annoyed when I see yet another story set in New York. There are people! And Asians! In other parts of the country (not just California either)💀

My silly gripe aside, this is a lovely debut on grief, home, Manchu culture, family, and photography.

A lovely debut about the journey of Wu Aimee back to her home village in NE China on receipt of news of her mother's passing. As I had read the blurb too fast, I thought that Aimee would have to go through the underworld to reconcile with her mother. The Light of Eternal Spring is a reflective lyrical take on the role of art in storytelling. As Aimee is a photographer, she perceives the world through framing and light. Some of the images described such as ladybugs blanketing a wall and lanterns alight at the Mid-Autumn Festival are just gorgeous.

The stories of Manchu shamanism, folktales, mythology, culture and herbalism imparted by Aimee's mother when she was young form a guiding framework for her internal journey. The relationship was fraught then estranged after Aimee left the village to go to Harbin to study then onward to New York. Aimee or Amy has established for herself a life in New York. As with many diaspora, she feels her selves being split and this visit home to her family is not only for reconciliation with them.

Although knowing the village could be fictional, I couldn't help being inquisitive about Eternal Spring (would it be yongchun or yongchuan?) . With the clues in the text, I gather it's in the province of Heilongjiang in the Dongbei region, situated at the trifecta border of China, North Korea and Russia. Aimee's disorientation at finding the village turn from a few hundred population to close to a town of two hundred thousand after an oil boom is understandable. Reconnecting with her Manchu heritage and the redemptive love of family in Eternal Spring brings about an unexpected chrysalis transformation.

Thanks to Random House Canada and Netgalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. The Light of Eternal Spring's publication date is 25th April 2023.

This isn't a review in the traditional sense I guess? But just know this book has me weeping and crying. I don't have words to express how tender, how incredibly emotive this story is. If Angel di Zhang continues to write like this, I know she's going to be one of the biggest contemporary writers.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for a digital arc in exchange for an honest review!

I love family stories exploring grief, family history and connection so I was drawn to the description of this book. Aimee (or Amy, as she's Americanized her name) moved to New York to pursue her dream of photography and hasn't been back to her home town of Eternal Spring in China for over a decade. One day she receives a letter from her sister saying that her mother has died, prompting her to make the journey home.

Throughout the book we see both Aimee in present day as she deals with her grief and the fallout of seeing her family for the first time in year, as well as flashbacks of her childhood growing up in a small Chinese village. This book is a stunning debut by Angel Di Zhang. Her writing is lush and evocative, really making you feel like you're experiencing things with Aimee. I highly recommend this book and I'm also excited to see where Angel Di Zhang's literary career goes from here!