February 25, 2008
Lee's poignant debut saga covers three generations of a Chinese-Canadian family in Vancouver. Their story begins when Chan Seid Quan emigrates to Vancouver in 1913 at 17, but the novel opens 10 years after his death at the age of 94, when his granddaughter, Samantha, leaves graduate school and a lover in Montreal to return to Vancouver to take care of her mother. Samantha—frozen with indecision about her future and resentful that she's burdened with responsibility she didn't choose—passes her days contemplating her family's past. Polished, nonchronological set pieces offer glimpses of hardship, alienation and despair in Vancouver's Chinatown. Seid Quan returns to China at intervals separated by years, just often enough to marry, father three children and return to Canada after each visit a lonelier man. His youngest child, a son named Pon Man, relocates to Vancouver in 1951 at 15, and eventually marries and has five daughters, the youngest of whom is Samantha. Seid Quan's wife, Shew Lin, survives war and occupation while caring for her three children, and eventually arrives in Vancouver. She's tough, particularly on Pon Man's wife, Siu Sang, who suffers postpartum depression. The present ceaselessly mirrors the past in this enlightening look at Vancouver's slice of the Chinese diaspora.