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HOW MUCH of THESE HILLS is GOLD
I loved this book, and think it may well go down as an American “classic” someday. Just came out this month and it turns the old cowboy/western/gold rush narrative on its head and more. Beautiful prose, a highly original take on a foundation laid by (her noted) influences, Steinbeck and Laura Ingalls Wilder, among others. The music, the pacing, the mixing in of Chinese is all her own, as is the way she weaves in parts of her own 21st century life-experience, indirectly, undercover, so to speak.
Set in an unnamed land in the west — likely the then recent state of California — Zhang tells the story of two just-orphaned siblings, Lucy and Sam, 12 and 11, to start things off. Their journey is wondrous, brutal, tragic, magical, primarily because Zhang’s style and command of her material is so engrossing and unique. It’s also a story we’ve pretty much been denied for too long.
(Another recent read (from 2012), Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic, tackles some of the same themes of the immigrant experience in America, though from a Japanese perspective. Both are brilliant.)
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