Bone

January 4, 1993
This remarkable first novel chronicles a believable journey through pain to healing, exposing the emotional scars--the bleeding hearts and aching kinship bones--of its characters as they try to survive. The Leong family, based in San Francisco's Chinatown, includes three daughters: educator/community-relations specialist Leila, the narrator; restaurant hostess Ona, whose troubled life ends tragically in early adulthood; and Nina, who eventually takes off for New York, where she works as a flight attendant. Heading the clan (in an idiosyncratic, maddening fashion) are mother Mah, a seamstress who owns a baby clothing store, and father Leon, a merchant seaman who lives apart from his wife in an SRO-type hotel, keeping his ``Going-Back-to-China Money'' in a brown bag. Ng summons a quiet urgency from simple language, both in her physical descriptions (such as that of the office of the Hoy Sun Ning Yung Benevolent Association) and in her depictions of the characters' seesawing thoughts and feelings as they move between the Chinese- and English-speaking cultures. She ventures outside the Leong household less often than one might wish, but she lucidly renders those secondary characters, notably Leila's beau, Mason Louie, a mechanic who strives to understand and embrace her relatives but also hopes to convince her to establish a separate family with him. Ng reveals his insight into Leila's moodiness thus: ``He says my anger is like flooding--too much gas, killing the engine.'' With such brilliant details, and in the larger picture of how death and life inform one another, this writer makes a stunning debut. Major ad/promo; author tour.

January 3, 1994
This remarkable first novel explores the aspirations, struggles and emotional scars of a family living in San Francisco's Chinatown.

January 1, 1993
In sharp contrast to the overdramatized lives of Chinese Americans in Amy Tan's work, Ng's simply written first novel is totally without sensationalism. Yet because her characters are depicted so realistically, the reader cannot but be moved by the hopes, grief, and quarrels of two generations of Chinese Americans in San Francisco's Chinatown. Mah, who has worked hard all her life in garment sweatshops, finally is able to own her baby-clothing store. Her husband, Leon, who used to be a merchant seaman, worked two shifts in ships' laundry rooms to provide for his family. Nevertheless, the family is torn apart after Ona, the middle daughter, jumps from the tallest building in Chinatown. The bones of contention and bones of inheritance come together in great turmoil as Nina, the youngest daughter, leaves Chinatown for New York City and then Leila, the oldest, marries and moves out to the suburbs. Leon, the paper son to old Leung, fails to keep his promise to take Leung's bones back to China. Thus, a family's tragedy is cast in greater historical context, and the reader is rewarded with a rich reading experience. Recommended for all libraries.-- Cherry W. Li, Los Angeles

Copyright 1993 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 15, 1992
In her first novel, respected short-story writer Ng takes her readers to the back streets of San Francisco's Chinatown for a tale of hard-working immigrants and between-two-worlds children; at its heart, however, "Bone" is a moving, sometimes claustrophobic narrative of the bonds of love and guilt, gratitude and resentment, promises and betrayal, that link every nuclear family. The suicide of middle-daughter Ona burdens every family member: Leila Fu, the narrator; Ona's older half-sister, a teacher and community-relations specialist struggling to define her own life without deserting the old-country elders who depend on her as intermediary to the outside world; younger sister Nina, a stewardess who lives in New York and leads tours of the People's Republic but cannot escape Chinatown; workaholic seamstress Mah, somehow disappointed in her search for love in marriage, in adultery, and in her daughters; and Leon, father and stepfather, a seaman whose long absences permitted Mah's adultery, a dreamer betrayed by the Land of the Free, a "paper son" who believes his broken promise--his failure to arrange for burial of his immigration sponsor's bones in China--is responsible for his family's troubles. Mah's sewing ladies and the old men who loiter with Leon at Portsmouth Square use the rituals of another time and place and culture to ease their losses, but Leila must seek "a ritual that forgave . . . a ritual to forget" in the layered movement from grief and guilt through stages of memory to acceptance and peace. An excellent first novel, steeped in particulars, ripe with universals. ((Reviewed Sept. 15, 1992))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1992, American Library Association.)