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A Novel
by C Pam Zhang
Book Reviewed by:An electric debut novel set against the twilight of the American gold rush, two siblings are on the run in an unforgiving landscape - trying not just to survive but to find a home.
Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future.
Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and re-imagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature. On a broad level, it explores race in an expanding country and the question of where immigrants are allowed to belong. But page by page, it's about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home.
That the book is very much literary fiction for adults but features children makes it feel like a restorative gift, a youthful adventure story come years too late for my own youth but with provisions made for my age. How Much of These Hills Is Gold is raw, elemental and irreplaceable, something singular and essential. Zhang's novel is a landmark debut that doesn't just fill gaps in the historical fiction genre, but subverts it, calling attention to the very limitations of colonial recorded history...continued
Full Review
(967 words)
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(Reviewed by Elisabeth Cook).
In C Pam Zhang's How Much of These Hills Is Gold, signs of and references to tigers consistently appear around its characters, although they are presumed to be in the American West where (at least in the real world) native tigers don't exist. For example, Lucy, the main character, mentions that her mother draws a tiger in the doorway of every new home when they arrive. Late in the book, there are rumors about a tiger roaming around the frontier town where Lucy lives. Paw prints that seem like they could belong to tigers randomly appear. While Zhang's novel never explicitly states that Lucy and her family are of Chinese ancestry, this is heavily implied through linguistic and cultural elements of which the tiger references are a part.
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The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people ...
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Chigozie Obioma, author of Booker Prize finalist An Orchestra of Minorities
A haunting, riveting and truly remarkable debut. Zhang writes with the clear-eyed lucidity of ancient myth-makers whose eyes are attuned to the vicissitudes of nature and humanity.
