Interesting premise, but a lackluster execution. We follow the Shang family, starting with present day and working through each family's POV (and even some people who worked closely with the family) back to 2014. I think this was confusing, as we really only get one or two "chapters" (which are just anecdotal POV's one at a time) per character and no one ever really gets fully fleshed out. They all only have one maybe 2 personal conflicts that are introduced but never feel like get fully resolved. They were interesting enough in their own right, but after I finished reading I felt indifferent. Each short story didn't feel interconnected outside of the fact that they were all apart of, or worked for, the Shang family. I don't think it helped us establish their relationships with each other, and frankly I was bored. I really wanted to like this one but just couldn't. Was going to rate it 2 stars, but I like Juli's writing and just wish this was more cohesive and put together. I think putting the story backwards was the biggest detriment and altogether just confusing.

Thank you to NetGalley, Spiegel & Grau, & to Juli Min for the eArc. I would love to read another of Julie's works if she comes out with something in the future, I think this had promise it just missed the mark. I think could've been a really good story.

The ‘story in reverse’ concept was interesting, though I did feel the ‘near future’ setting was squandered a little- this could just as well have been set in present day and we’d hardly know the difference. There’s a little bit of head-hopping from the main characters POV to side characters, which did jar initially, but the prose is otherwise good. For a book called ‘Shanghailanders’, however, I expected a bit more of well, Shanghai - the characters also seem a little obsessed with outlining their non-Chinese backgrounds - part French, Part Japanese etc. and spend a lot of time overseas. I suppose I just had slightly different expectations, from the title. These were more interconnected vignettes than a full novel, but I did enjoy each section, I just wanted a little more.

"Shanghailanders," by Juli Min, is an ambitious debut novel about a family living in Shanghai, China.

What first attracted me to this book was its vibrantly colored cover and its cover design. The premise of the book is also something very original that I haven't come across before. The novel is told in a reverse timeline, starting off in 2040 and slowly going back in time to 2014.

It follows the affluent Yang family: Leo, a native Shanghainese businessman, his wife Eko, a French-Japanese woman, and their three daughters, Yumi, Yoko, and Yukiko. Each chapter shares a different character's perspective, and some chapters are narrated by people close to the family, like staff members in their household.

The novel is much more character oriented than plot oriented. It is an exploration of the relationships between the characters, such as marriage, siblings' relations, parents and caretakers, and children's relationships, as well as love affairs. The reading experience felt like taking a secret peek into a family's life, some mundane and some hidden and not meant to be shared.

I enjoyed this novel a lot and felt invested in the Yang's family's life. Thank you to NetGalley and Speigel & Grau for the e-arc. All opinions are my own.

In a Nutshell: A literary fiction structured in reverse, going from 2040 to 2014. Character-driven all the way. The structure is what will make or break your experience. I loved it, despite the few gaps in the jigsaw. A marvellous debut. And guess what, I am an outlier… on the positive side – Yippee! 🥳

Plot Preview:
2040. After dropping off his family at the airport, real estate businessman and Shanghai local Leo Yang is in the train back to the city. On the journey, he mulls over why his wife insisted on accompanying his two elder daughters to Boston, though they are grown up enough to travel independently. Leo’s family comprises his wife Eko, an artistic Japanese-French woman who is tired of Shanghai, and his three daughters, Yumi (20, self-obsessed, and has a dark secret), Yoko (18, academically inclined, and has a dark secret), and Yukiko (16, the baby of the family, and has a dark secret.)
As the book traverses down the years, working backwards from 2040 to 2014 a few months/years at a time, we learn more about the family and some key incidents in their lives, through their own narration, or through the eyes of those who work for them. Each section comes from a different time period and a different character.

Just a couple of days back, I read a book that was marketed as a short story collection but turned out to be a composite novel. I didn’t like it as much as I would have, had I known what to expect. Now here’s a composite novel tagged accurately as a literary fiction. What a difference the right label makes to our experience! I went in prepared for a character-driven storytelling, and got exactly that.

Bookish Yays:
😍 Every section, coming from a specific time period and a distinct character, feels like a proper story, beginning and progressing the way an independent short story would. This book thus reads as a series of vignettes, with the first and the last one coming from Leo, making the book come a full circle.
😍 As the title suggests, the book highlights a variety of “Shanghailanders”. Thus we get the narratives from varied age groups (child to senior citizen), financial status (from wealthy to poor), and even from male and female characters. Most perspectives are in third person, but there are a couple in first or second person. I enjoyed the variety of voices, both in terms of characters as well as writing.
😍 The Yang family is not entirely likeable. Each of them has their positives and negatives and secrets. Their complexities lend depth to the novel. Two of the chapters that come from secondary characters working with the Yangs are the most interesting, both in terms of the characters’ backstory as well as the insights they offer into their employers.
😍 The writing is focussed. While clearly character-oriented, the author creates a tangible feel of the setting, balancing her descriptions without overburdening the story flow.
😍 As with every story focussed on a family, the book highlights various aspects of families that appear normal but are actually dysfunctional. Relationships, secrets, emotions, fights, loyalty, loneliness, scandals, trauma, unaware parents, emotionally damaged children – all are a part of this narrative. I like how the drama, despite so many potentially emotional topics, never goes over the top.
😍 The near-future world beyond our current year feels realistic enough. There are technological improvements over our current world and also hotter temperatures, but it is not a world so unbelievably ultra-modern that it seems implausible.
😍 There is no overarching plot in this story, nor a central conflict or a happy family reunion at the finale. The narrative is focussed on the characters and their backstories, with us already knowing the events of the “present time” of 2040, and then discovering what could have led to that stage. This might not work for some readers, but I liked it.
😍 The pace is on the slower side, as is typical of literary fiction, but it never slackens. I was invested from start to end, thanks to the intricate structuring.
😍 Though the setting is clearly Chinese, the story feels universal thanks to the characters and the human flaws and frailties so clearly visible in them. That said, the story still gives us enough of a glimpse of Shanghai and its people. I am not sure if this counts as an OwnVoices work, because the author is a Korean-American living in Shanghai. But at least by location and tone, it appears authentic. (Only a Shanghainese would be able to confirm this.)


Bookish Mixed Bags:
😐 The backward structure is the USP of this novel, but it works both for and against the narrative. While it offers an innovativeness to the experience, it also makes the reader’s task a tad difficult. We need to keep track of the reverse aging of the characters, which gets a bit confusing at times. Also, backwards storytelling is used when there is a big reveal in the latest timeframe and then we discover what led to it. But there is no single big reveal here. Instead, we get loads of mini reveals about the characters, which is good in its own way but doesn’t offer a holistic picture of their life.
😐 As each section comes from a different character and from a different year, we see only their isolated perspective on the events of that time. So all the pieces of the jigsaw aren't available to us. This won’t satisfy readers who need completed arcs. The “What happened next?” stays unanswered as the “next” perspective is from a different character. Mind you, this didn’t affect my reading experience. I was still fascinated. Just that when I reflected back on a certain character, I wished I knew what happened to them afterwards.


Bookish If Onlys:
😕 Minor complaint: Keeping track of Yumi and Yoko was very confusing for me. (Not being racist here. I feel equally confused about a Jenn and a Jill or a Rajiv and a Ravi being in the same book. Heck, I even confuse my daughters’ names, both of which begin with ‘An----.') Thankfully, Yukiko was referred to as ‘Kiko’, otherwise my confusion would have been greater. I wish the two older girls had names beginning with distinct letters.

All in all, despite a few stumbling blocks, I really loved this book. While it has a strong literary flavour, I feel it will work for those readers who enjoy not just character-oriented narratives but also short story collections. For a debut work, this novel is quite ambitious, so kudos to the author for presenting us with this unusual dysfunctional family storyline without dumping unnecessary themes into the plot.

Definitely recommended, but not to all. If you like to read an easy-going story with likeable characters, a proper plot, settled character arcs, and a satisfying ending, this book isn’t for you.

4 stars.

My thanks to Spiegel & Grau for providing the DRC of “Shanghailanders” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

To put this as another reviewer did, this book just screams “✨literary fiction✨”. And perhaps, knowing that literary fiction can sometimes bore and even irk me, I shouldn’t have picked this up. But it looked intriguing, and I will always give Asian authors an extra chance, so here I am.

Unfortunately, this book just did not do it for me. Reverse narratives, moving back in time, often serve a significant purpose, and while this one starts with a broken family and moves towards their happy beginnings, I didn’t find that the narrative structure helped me as a reader in any way other than to make me sadder. I suppose that might have been the point, but I think the family’s predicament would have been mightily sad and bittersweet regardless of the chronology of the story.

I also just personally didn’t find myself caring too deeply about any of the characters. The depictions of their flaws were written beautifully (the whole book was written beautifully), but there were some tangential sequences following side characters that didn’t seem to measure up to what the overarching novel was about, and I just could not find the investment that I should have had. On the whole, I give this 2⭐

*Thank you again to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.*

This book was contemporary fiction delving into the delicacies of female life at its finest. With an interesting format the had me questioning how I could ever be satisfied with a story ending at the start, this book surprised me and left me thinking about it weeks after I have finished.

SHANGHAILANDERS by Juli Min is a book that uses an inventive format, going backwards in time from 2040 to 2014 to tell the story of a cosmopolitan family living in Shanghai. Each chapter reads like an interconnected short story and is told from the perspective of a different family member or household employee (my favorites). As the book unfolds, rewinding time, we see the bedrock of secrets that have been kept.

Leo Yang is a successful real estate investor; his Japanese-French wife, Eko, is an enigma; and their three daughters, Yumi, Yoko, and Kiko, have some real baggage. I found Min’s writing and storytelling to be utterly absorbing and was held rapt as I watched this dysfunctional family with mostly unlikeable characters go through domestic dramas.

While the plot device of going backwards in time was creative, in the end, I’m not sure if it served the book or the characters well, as it was hard to stay emotionally invested in them with the reverse time leaps. I know it’s trying to illustrate the way a person is shaped by the events of the past, but the payoff wasn’t always there. Despite the title, Shanghai is mostly peripheral to the story, as is the year 2040 (trains are faster and it’s hotter). The chapters centering on the nanny and the family’s driver were the highlights for me.

I’d recommend this one to readers who enjoy an experimental, non-linear narrative and who like the buried secrets behind a picture-perfect, super wealthy family. Min’s writing was engaging, so I’ll definitely be picking up whatever she writes next!

Shanghailanders is largely about a wealthy family in Shanghai consisting of a Chinese father, Japanese-French mother, and their three daughters. The dazzling story is told in vignettes about their lives and some close to them. It is also told in reverse order, so it's fascinating to see what connects each person and event. The voice in each story is distinct and the situations are fascinating. The author is sensitive to depicting different cultures and lifestyles. It being told in vignettes made it hard for me to connect with the characters, but it's written in a dazzling way. I listened to/read the book. The audiobook narration is fantastic. The narrator nails different accents and language pronunciations across the different settings.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC. All thoughts are my own.

I struggled with this - both the book and how to review it. There was a lot of potential with the main characters - they were all so different and individual, and showed how members of the same family can have vastly different wants, needs and foci. I also think this writer has huge potential. But the backwards format of this book simply did not work for me. I spent too much time trying to relate what I was reading to what I read previously in order to try and tie it all together, and while things finally tied together at the end, I needed it to make more sense throughout the entire book. It was a bit like short stories that all tied together with a common theme. And short stories are probably my least favorite book genre. So while I desperately wanted to like this book, I just couldn't get past the format.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

i always love a family saga, and this was no exception. i did see some other reviewers saying they found the sort of vignette storytelling to be difficult to follow, but i actually found the format really engaging.

I really enjoyed the atmospheric writing in Min's time-bending, futuristic(ish) novel about a wealthy Asian family, told in multiple points of view, going backward in time. I like the idea of a story being chopped up in this way, but unfortunately, this element to the story didn't add much in the way of plot or necessity. There didn't feel like a reason to have the story told in this way, other than to be different. Further, the story was told in the near future (2030s/2040s) but it wasn't distant enough that this element was necessary either. Everything was too similar to how things are now and it didn't add anything to the story. It didn't take away from the story either, but just was an added thing you needed to keep track of as the reader. All in all I felt that the structure of the story could have used another review, but enjoyed the writing enough that I will reader more of Min's writing in the future.

Shanghailanders details (backwards in time) the lives of a wealthy Chinese/Japanese/French family, starting in 2040 and beginning in 2014. While I enjoyed the prose, I didn't feel any connection to the characters. I had never read anything told in reverse order before and I find that this was not something I care for.

Shanghailanders
By Juli Min

This book is about families – young people and older, parents and children – but written from the view of Asian culture: Chinese, Japanese, Korean – as well as with a mixture of French and English colonialism sprinkled into the mix.

The story is also told starting in the future (2040 to be exact) and working backward through the years to 2014. I found some of the interpersonal dynamic interesting, but between the Asian culture that I am not very familiar with and the reverse time line, I found myself getting lost in the tale. I had a hard time with this book.

"Eko, the stranger – he would spend his entire life knowing her, traveling down into the past, into those stories, and into the future, together... So this was love, feeling time unfurl from a moment."

It's 2040 and in climate-threatened Shanghai the Lang family has split, even though they don't seem to realise that their physical distance is mirrored by the emotional chasm between them. Business tycoon Leo believes he's always right, much to the chagrin of his long-suffering wife French-Japanese wife Eko, who's thinking of leaving him. Their three daughters are going their own way, Yumi and Yoko are studying at Harvard. But both have secrets: Yumi is a thief and Yoko is pregnant. The youngest daughter, Kiko, is an aspiring actress. But in an act of defiance, she decides she'll pursue fame by becoming an escort.

The book plays out in reverse, the years ticking down back to 2014 when Leo and Eko meet and fall in love. In this way, the reader sees exactly how the Lang family became estranged from one another, how they got to the point where they keep dark secrets and often hate each other, but how they also can't escape the deep love of familial bonds.

We are given the views of each family member, as well as some of the people in their orbit, like their private driver and their nanny, who each give us an outsider's perspective on the family. These two have their own lives that the family knows nothing about, showing how self-absorbed the Langs can be.

I appreciated how delicately the author weaves the different strands of this story together, using the device of rewinding the chronological timeline. I thought that was cleverly done.

I thought the characters were interesting but some of them lacked a bit of depth. I liked that each had his/her own secrets but I wasn't always convinced of their motivations and I think fleshing out each of their stories just a little would have helped me understand them a bit better. Yumi, in particular, is hard to understand. Is her kleptomania a symptom of her upbringing? If so, how? Why is she mean and cruel?

The book explores issues around clashes of culture (Leo being Chinese and Eko being Japanese-French), and the love-hate relationships we have with our families, all against the backdrop of an impending climate apocalypse.

The writing is really beautiful and to me, is the best part of the book.

A long daisy-chain of linked short stories about the five members of a wealthy Shanghai family: Leo, the real-estate oligarch; Eko, his high-maintenance French-Japanese wife, and their three messed-up and overindulged daughters. The only formal innovation is that the narrative runs in reverse, from 2040 back to 2014. Otherwise, this is a perfectly conventional domestic novel of marital and family dysfunction.

*I was gifted a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

Shanghailanders explores the lives of a Shanghai household, beginning in 2040 and moving back through time to create a portrait of a family and the moments that have shaped them. It reveals their secrets, thoughts, emotions and struggles, along with building the relationships between them through tracking their histories.

This worked more as a series of short stories instead of an overall narrative, providing snapshots of each character at different times. These didn’t really form any kind of plot, with the novel meandering through moments which were very much character studies. I kind of wanted these to go somewhere and build up to a significant event, but everything was left hanging, but the character development was great all the same.

If you’re looking for a book which explores family relationships through interconnected stories, I’d definitely recommend picking this up.

3.75 stars
Moving backwards in time from 2040 to 2014, Shanghailanders details the lives of a wealthy, multiracial family-- husband & wife and their 3 daughters. I absolutely loved Min's writing style! The relationships between the characters had be enthralled; they felt authentic and relatable despite how different my life is from any of theirs.
Told in reverse and through multi POVs, this felt more like a book of interconnected short stories rather than a cohesive novel. Think it would be more logical if it was marketed in that way. Also due to its structure, I was left hanging at the end of each section, wanting to learn more about what happened next or in the in-between.

the novel's structure brought to mind another novel, and similarly to that one it ended up making the story feel gimmicky and sort of pointless.

Shared and spinning lives, an epic family tale from start to finish, bound to be the next "Pachinko". very impressive. tysm for thearc.

Shanghailanders reads like a collection of interconnected short stories offering glimpses into the life of the Yang family. Capturing their family going backward in time was a very interesting premise, and I started the book enjoying it. Nevertheless, after each snapshot in time, I was always wishing for more. I wanted to know more about what happened. While the story is about the Yang family, I wasn't that interested in their rich problems and felt myself drawn more to the lives of the nanny or the driver, even the lady working for the train company. I guess those were the characters I wanted to hear more about.

Thanks to Spiegel & Grau and NetGalley for an ARC of this book.