- This is a sad story, beautifully told. Two lonely people, one old Australian woman, one young Chinese man, are grappling with family and personal tragedies.
- Cheng constructs a rather simple narrative but she enriches it with reflections on motherhood, family, illness, anxiety, death, and most of all loneliness. Her characters are captured and wounded by loveless families. Andy, the young student from Hong Kong, ‘felt like an insect trapped in amber, imprisoned and alone’.
- The old lady, Meg, castigates herself for ‘talking without really saying anything’.
- Death is a real presence in the story, and lives are thwarted, not fully lived. Potential is not realised. ‘No family’s perfect. Every family is broken’.
- As the novel develops Cheng contrasts, respectfully and subtly, not just two different people but two distinct cultures, Chinese and Australian. Whether it be food, houses, animals, family life, law, education, ambition, recreation - illness and other constraints are dominant.
- This is a superb novel that will stay with you long after you've read it. You know these people and you feel for them.
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