Short but not simple stories

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irezelina Avatar

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Thank you BookishFirst, author Te-Ping Chen and her publishing company for providing a copy of the uncorrected proof for me to review. I understand that the final version may have changes that make some of my points irrelevant so this review is based on what I read before it has been finalized:
The book is a collection of short stories that all have Chinese protagonists. Every narrator has a different story that is unrelated between chapters. Some of the stories moved me more than others but all of them mention topics that modern mainland China citizens may experience. I am Chinese American so many of the problems/themes mentioned in this book sounded familiar, yet were different because I live in a different environment/country after all.
From my perspective, there were lots of tiny nuances that could be fixed. For instance in the chapter Land of Big Numbers, there was a quote that was in Chinese pinyin but the author didn't space the words out correctly. Also in that story specifically, it was weird to see the protagonist's parents be mentioned by their name sometimes. His mother would be talking and all of a sudden, she was mentioned as Junling, or he was thinking about his dad and he would be mentioned as Boyang. The reason it is weird to me is because Chinese children don't call their parents by their names as it would be disrespectful. Since the story is from the son's perspective, the parents shouldn't be mentioned by their name. At least use Mr. or Mrs. Zhu to note the levels of respect.
Overall I like the variety of stories and characters in this book. Some chapters' endings provided more closure than others and those were the ones I liked more. I understand that they are all short stories but that doesn't mean it can't end on a complete note where most of the drama is resolved. My favorite chapter was New Fruit and my least favorite was Field Notes on a Marriage.
I also noted that the title of the entire series is Land of Big Numbers but that story didn't seem as deep as Lulu or Gubeikou Spirit was to me. I would be interested to know why the author chose Land of Big Numbers to represent the collection as a whole.