Jin, Ha. A Good Fall: Stories. Pantheon Books, 2009.
Reason read: Jin’s birthday is in February. Read in his honor.
Twelve stories with themes like immigrants in transition, culture clashes, vanity, identity, and family traditions. Ha Jin’s characters are so well drawn they keep speaking to me after I have closed the book. I could see A Good Fall as a movie with interconnecting stories of Chinese immigrants living in Flushing, New York. Maybe they are all living in the same apartment and pass each other on the stairs? Each suffering their secrets in silence?
I do not think it is a spoiler to say that A Good Fall surprisingly ends on a hopeful note.
- The Bane of the Internet
- A Composer and His Parakeet
- The Beauty
- Choice
- Children as Enemies
- In the Crossfire
- Shame
- An English Professor
- A Pension Plan
- Temporary Love
- The House Behind a Weeping Cherry
- A Good Fall
Lines I liked, “After Zuming came, she would have to become a faithful wife again” (p 177). That sentence is packed with so much drama. And then there is this one, “Keep in mind, yours is not the worst sorrow” (p 236).
Author fact: Ha Jin is also a poet.
Book trivia: Many people have mentioned that the short stories of Ha Jin are very repetitious. For that reason I am spreading out my reading so that it does not become tedious. I have already read Ocean of Words and The Bridegroom. I am also reading Waiting but not until September of 2042.
Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about A Good Fall.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “China: the Middle Kingdom” (p 61). Except…most of Jin’s stories take place in Flushing, New York. The characters are immigrants from China.
~*LunaSea*~ 