The Moon Represents My Heart

The Wang family -- parents Joshua and Lily and twins Tommy and Eva -- all possess the gift of time travel. When Joshua and Lily disappear on one time-travel attempt, 12-year-old Tommy and Eva must learn to deal with their grief, and their own time traveling offers them different ways of coping with their loss. While Eva follows the voices of her ancestors and learns more about her family, incorporating it into her art, Tommy returns time and again to London's East End before World War II to meet and fall in love with Peggy. But as they reach adulthood, their separate experiences begin to pull the twins apart.

This lyrical and mesmerizing story hops between perspectives and times, revealing in pieces not only Tommy and Eva's journeys but their parents' childhoods and how they came together. Even in the briefest snippets of narrative, the author deftly creates a clear picture of each character and the dynamics between them. While the writing shifts from prose to verse, sometimes seemingly randomly, it has a lightness that gives the reader a feeling of drifting through time along with the characters.

Dreamy, utterly unputdownable. 4.5 stars rounded up.

Thank you, Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley, for providing an eARC of this book. Opinions expressed here are solely my own.

This didn't disappoint! I loved the time travel hook, the locations, the family dramas, the stories. Just a really solid book. It jumped around a lot from person to person and even in time but it was tight and made sense. I can't say that about every book I've read likely.

If Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood For Love had a time-traveling spiritual successor, it would be THIS book. If Somewhere in Time also grappled with immigrant experiences, diaspora, and generational trauma, it is THIS book (and more!) If you enjoy a sci-fi bent to your books with a cast of people of color that reads like poetry - I can’t stress this enough - this. Is. THAT. Book.

To say that I loved this book is likely the understatement of the year. “The Moon Represents My Heart” is as if a painter decided to trade their watercolors for words, a dazzling novel that explores heartache and loss in more ways than one.

The simplest way I can offer a synopsis is as follows: Joshua and Lilly find each other in 1980’s London as the sole Asian faces they see at their university. They fall in love and also happen to be two people who can time travel, but only to very specific places and times. While they conduct research into their talent, their children Eva and Tommy inherit this ability and the whole family becomes enveloped in a time-traveling drama that spans centuries, generations, and continents.

I can’t wait to start recommending this book to more Cantonese folks in my life; this book already had me reeling in my feelings as an immigrant and an inheritor of painful legacies of migration, let alone if it’s my own family’s history being explored. And it does so with so much love, painstaking detail, and profound empathy for its characters, even when they make the most unfortunate, obsessive decisions (I’m looking at you, Tommy).

Sentimental but never mawkish, “The Moon Represents My Heart” took mine, smashed it, and then travelled to the past and future in an effort to mend it. Eva’s storyline in particular and the role of art in community building will probably stick with me for a long, long time. Excited to see the reception of this book especially for those it lovingly dedicates itself to.