Name: The Foremost Good Fortune
Rating: 5.0 (5 reviews)
Author: Susan Conley

About this book

Summary

Book Summary

Susan Conley, her husband, and their two young sons say good-bye to their friends, family, and house in Maine for a two-year stint in a high-rise apartment in Beijing, prepared to embrace the inevitable onslaught of new experiences that such a move entails. But Susan can’t predict just how much their lives will change.

While her husband is consumed with his job, Susan works on finishing her novel and confronting the challenges of day-to-day life in an utterly foreign country: determining the proper way to buy apples at a Chinese megamarket; bribing her little boys to ride the school bus; fielding invitations to mysterious "sweater parties" and tracking down the faux-purse empire of the infamous Bag Lady; and getting stuck in an elevator, unable to call for help in Mandarin.

Despite the distractions, there are many occasions for joy. From road trips to the Great Wall and bartering for a "starter Buddha" at the raucous flea market to lighting fireworks in the streets for the Chinese New Year and feasting on the world’s best dumplings in back-alley restaurants, they gradually turn their unfamiliar environs into a true home.

Then Susan learns she has cancer. After undergoing treatment in Boston, she returns to Beijing, again as a foreigner - but this time, it’s her own body in which she feels a stranger. Set against the eternally fascinating backdrop of modern China and full of insight into the trickiest questions of motherhood - How do you talk to children about death? When is it okay to lie? - this wry and poignant memoir is a celebration of family and a candid exploration of mortality and belonging.

Membership Advantages

Reviews
"Beyond the Book" articles
Free books to read and review (US only)
Find books by time period, setting & theme
Read-alike suggestions by book and author
Book club discussions
and much more!
Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
More about membership!

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. [A] luminous memoir...Conley's writing is at once spare and strong, and ...pulls the reader into her world like a close friend." - Publishers Weekly

"Beautifully written and insightful on many levels." - Booklist

"A straightforward tale of how China won over an American family." - Kirkus

"The Foremost Good Fortune is a moving and exhilarating ride, as well as a deep meditation on family, belief and mortality. Conley’s keen eye captures small moments in gorgeous detail that offer a wider perspective on the whole they create. Conley resets the bar for the memoir with her humor, sensitivity, and stunning sentences.” —Lily King, author of Father of the Rain

"From its endearing and at times comic tableau of an American family abroad in the new, proliferating China of today’s headlines, to the heartrending news that narrows Conley’s whole world to survival, The Foremost Good Fortune is told by an intrepid traveler who has found her voice in a daunting, exhilarating cultural wilderness...and has found it with wisdom and grace and wonder." - Michael Paterniti, author of Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain

This information about The Foremost Good Fortune was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own review

Lance Cromwell

A FANTASTIC BOOK !
I was simply floored by The Foremost Good Fortune. It was so beautifully written overall, with some absolutely stunning passages and sentences in there. It hit me on all sorts of levels, and as such, I find that it is wholly (and widely!) recommendable. There is something in there for the Traveler, the Parent, the Spouse/Partner, the Reader, the Writer, those dealing with Chronic Illness, and for those who appreciate life's details, well-observed. Congratulations to Susan Conley on a beautiful accomplishment.

By the way, the chapter entitled "Clouds or Butterflies" killed me. Absolutely slayed me. What a thing to have happen in the course of a life...

I hope I can sidestep sounding sappy when I say that I feel honored to have read this book. I know it is a thing that is out there for the world to experience, but the intimacy and honesty with which it was written, makes me feel lucky to have read it... So, a big thank you to Susan Conley!

Odds are, if you read this book, you'll love it !

Caitlin Shetterly

Review for The Foremost Good Fortune
Susan Conley's gripping memoir, The Foremost Good Fortune, about her relocation to China and her battle with cancer--two equally foreign countries she must navigate--has a clarity of voice that is never maudlin. Conley gives us--at a time when we are all curious--both an insider's and an outsider's view of China. I read The Foremost Good Fortune in a white heat--I could not put it down and missed it as I'd miss a friend who had, say, gone to China, when I closed the last page.

Katherine Longstreth

preview
Susan Conley's memoir, The Foremost Good Fortune, is by turns poignant, informative, and funny. As Susan charts her way to an entirely new land she vividly captures China in all its bewildering juxtapositions. The honesty and intimacy of her writing makes it feel like you are taken by the hand on this compelling, difficult and inspiring journey. By the end I felt a profound kinship with her as a woman, mother and wife.

John C

This Book Resonates
When I first viewed the trailer recently posted for this book (at www.susanconley.com), I wondered: Is it a book about China or a book about breast cancer? I needed to box it in before reading. It took only a couple pages before I realized that you can't confine this author to a single category. It simply does not do her or the memoir justice.

The voice, the detail, and the sheer depth of these characters and these chapters remind me that talent always finds its place in the world. The broad, pre-conceived labels like “China,” and “Cancer” peel away and you as reader are riding shotgun with the author, questioning yourself about the choices you would make if dropped into a foreign land and burdened with a life-threatening disease.

This book is a reminder of how our lives are made up of small moments. It slows a life down into these moments - some hilarious and bizarre; others painfully sad - and allows the reader to become an innocent bystander, a student. This book is so relevant on so many levels. I hope you find value in its messages, as I have.

kat gillies

Foremost good fortune to have read this...
Susan Conley's memoir is a graceful pilgrimage in the wake of illness and cultural dislocation. Conley's journey as a young mother and her empathy towards her two little boys is a lesson in courage and humility written with humor and style. Most of the story is told in a bewildering China, one that you can smell, taste and feel big time. One can only imagine how Conley pulled it all together when discovering the big C.. Reading the chapter Clouds and Butterflies clues you in to one of the ways she possibly coped, a chapter containing her little sons drawing, like an amulet, and a sensitive and beautiful exchange hours before her surgery. Absolutely beautiful!

Membership Advantages