First of all, I would like to thank the publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Bookishfirst for providing me the opportunity to receive an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I'd also like to thank the author, Te-Ping Chen, for her incredible hard work.
Land of Big Numbers is a collection of short stories that all connect in some way to China in a range of different ways from a small-town farmer yearning to be able to join the Chinese Communist Party to a woman in the United States who marries a somewhat mysterious and private man from China to a young man who gets swept up in the fast-paced environment of the Chinese stock market.
I thought this book was incredible. This collection does not come out until February, and I can already say that I will purchase anything and everything that Te-Ping Chen comes out with in the future. Her descriptions felt effortless and beautiful. She allowed the reader to come into different characters' lives for a snippet of time and then leave. I felt as if these characters were real people, and I was a casual observer there to experience a moment in their lives. I loved the different explorations of the characters' connections to China and how each character was influenced by the connection in different ways.
What I loved most about these short stories, however, was the fact that Te-Ping Chen was able to get you to care for these characters (for better or worse) in such a short amount of time. I felt connected to these individuals almost immediately to the point where I realized I had been so pulled into the story and then thought how am I this invested in just a few short pages? The characters' stories were not over-explained and the reader was entrusted to infer details from the descriptions and events occurring. That being said, it didn't feel confusing or complicated. There was a pure simplicity that felt all-encompassing.
I honestly do not have anything bad to say about this book. Of course, I liked some stories better than others, but that is not to say that I disliked any of them. For some, Te-Ping Chen's abrupt endings to the stories may leave more to be desired, but I wasn't bothered by this in all but one story (Land of Big Numbers, in which I really wanted to know the resolution to Zhu Feng's predicament).
Overall, I highly recommend. For somebody who does not read short story collections, this book made me want to start.
Land of Big Numbers is a collection of short stories that all connect in some way to China in a range of different ways from a small-town farmer yearning to be able to join the Chinese Communist Party to a woman in the United States who marries a somewhat mysterious and private man from China to a young man who gets swept up in the fast-paced environment of the Chinese stock market.
I thought this book was incredible. This collection does not come out until February, and I can already say that I will purchase anything and everything that Te-Ping Chen comes out with in the future. Her descriptions felt effortless and beautiful. She allowed the reader to come into different characters' lives for a snippet of time and then leave. I felt as if these characters were real people, and I was a casual observer there to experience a moment in their lives. I loved the different explorations of the characters' connections to China and how each character was influenced by the connection in different ways.
What I loved most about these short stories, however, was the fact that Te-Ping Chen was able to get you to care for these characters (for better or worse) in such a short amount of time. I felt connected to these individuals almost immediately to the point where I realized I had been so pulled into the story and then thought how am I this invested in just a few short pages? The characters' stories were not over-explained and the reader was entrusted to infer details from the descriptions and events occurring. That being said, it didn't feel confusing or complicated. There was a pure simplicity that felt all-encompassing.
I honestly do not have anything bad to say about this book. Of course, I liked some stories better than others, but that is not to say that I disliked any of them. For some, Te-Ping Chen's abrupt endings to the stories may leave more to be desired, but I wasn't bothered by this in all but one story (Land of Big Numbers, in which I really wanted to know the resolution to Zhu Feng's predicament).
Overall, I highly recommend. For somebody who does not read short story collections, this book made me want to start.