World and town : a novel

Title:

Author:

Jen, Gish.

Personal Author:

Jen, Gish.

ISBN:

9780307272195

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.

Physical Description:

3846 p. ; 24 cm.

Abstract:

Two years after burying her husband and best friend, 68-year-old Hattie Kong moves to a small New England town where she is joined by a Cambodian family and reunited with an ex-lover before tackling challenges in the form of fundamentalist Christians andstruggling family farms.

Subject Term:

Chinese-American women -- Fiction.

Widows -- Fiction.

Cambodian Americans -- Fiction.

Refugee families -- Fiction.

City and town life -- United States -- Fiction.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... West End	Book	FICTION JEN	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

From the much-loved author of Who's Irish? and The Love Wife, a world-sized novel set in a small New England town.

Hattie Kong--the spirited offspring of a descendant of Confucius and an American missionary to China--has, in her fiftieth year of living in the United States, lost both her husband and her best friend to cancer. It is an utterly devastating loss, of course, and also heartbreakingly absurd: a little, she thinks, "like having twins. She got to book the same church with the same pianist for both funerals and did think she should have gotten some sort of twofer from the crematorium."

But now, two years later, it is time for Hattie to start over. She moves to the town of Riverlake, where she is soon joined by an immigrant Cambodian family on the run from their inner-city troubles, as well as--quite unexpectedly--by a just-retired neuroscientist ex-lover named Carter Hatch. All of them are, like Hattie, looking for a new start in a town that might once have represented the rock-solid base of American life but that is itself challenged, in 2001, by cell-phone towers and chain stores, struggling family farms and fundamentalist Christians.

What Hattie makes of this situation is at the center of a novel that asks deep and absorbing questions about religion, home, America, what neighbors are, what love is, and, in the largest sense, what "worlds" we make of the world.

Moving, humorous, compassionate, and expansive, World and Town is as rich in character as it is brilliantly evocative of its time and place. This is a truly masterful novel--enthralling, essential, and satisfying.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

In Jen's latest (The Love Wife, 2004, etc.) a retired teacherthe daughter of an American missionary who abandoned organized Christianity and a Chinese father descended from Confuciusstruggles to put her life back together after the deaths of her husband and best friend.Hattie Kong, 65, has lived as an outsider in America since she was sent here from China after the Communist takeover in that country. After being widowed she moves to Riverlake, the New England vacation town where she spent summers as a girl. Two years later she is embedded in the community but remains deeply lonely, turning mainly to her dogs for companionship. So when a family of Cambodian refugees moves in next door, she can't help involving herself in their troubled lives, giving them a wheelbarrow for their garden and befriending the teenage daughter, Sophy. But Hattie's understanding of the family's complex history is dangerously limited, and when Sophy becomes "born again" under the influence of a local woman whose brand of fundamental Christianity Hattie distrusts, the girl turns against not only Hattie but her troubled older brother with near tragic results. At the same time, retired biology professor Carter Hatch, the love of Hattie's life, turns up in town to waken long-dormant and confusing emotions. Newly arrived in America from China, Hattie lived with the Hatches, a prominent family of intellectuals. Although she and Carter had only one sexual encounter before they married other people, they shared an unspoken bond as young biologists until he let her down professionally. Now they play a painful game of approach-avoidance. Meanwhile, Hattie's Chinese relatives besiege her with requests that she re-bury her parents' remains in the family's Confucian cemetery for reasons she dismisses as superstitious.With prickly yet endearing Hattie, readers ponder the meaning of faith, commitment, love and loyalty without being fed easy answers (except against the stereotypically villainous fundamentalist Christians). But the usually deft Jen has thrown too many characters into the stew, serving up a novel of ideas more easily admired than enjoyed.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.