Dear Chrysanthemums
A Novel in Stories
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the 2024 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, a startling and vivid debut novel in stories from acclaimed poet and translator Fiona Sze-Lorrain, featuring deeply compelling Asian women who reckon with the past, violence, and exile—set in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Paris, and New York.
Composed of several interconnected stories, each taking place in a year ending with the number six, ironically a number that in Chinese divination signifies “a smooth life,” Dear Chrysanthemums is a novel about the scourge of inhumanity, survival, and past trauma that never leaves. The women in these stories are cooks, musicians, dancers, protestors, mothers and daughters, friends and enemies, all inexplicably connected in one way or another.
“Cooking for Madame Chiang,” 1946: Two cooks work for Madame Chiang Kai-shek and prepare a foreign dish craved by their mistress, which becomes a political weapon and leads to their tragic end.
“Death at the Wukang Mansion,” 1966: Punished for her extramarital affair, a dancer is transferred to Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution and assigned to an ominous apartment in a building whose other residents often depart in coffins.
“The White Piano,” 1966: A budding pianist from New York City settles down in Paris and is assaulted when a mysterious piano arrives from Singapore.
“The Invisible Window,” 2016: After their exile following the Tiananmen Square massacre, three women gather in a French cathedral to renew their friendship and reunite in their grief and faith.
With devastating precision, a masterly ear for language, and a profound understanding of both human cruelty and compassion, Fiona Sze-Lorrain weaves Dear Chrysanthemums, an evocative and disturbing portrait of diasporic life, the shared story of uprooting, resilience, artistic expression, and enduring love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Sze-Lorrain's graceful debut collection, women negotiate the violence of pivotal events in Chinese history. "Death at the Wukang Mansion" takes place in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution, when an accomplished ballerina is banished to a mansion and watches the same coffin entering and leaving the building with a different body each day. In "Cooking for Madame Chiang," a former servant of Madame Chiang Kai-shek works in the nationalist leader's household in 1946. Sze-Lorrain picks up with the narrator years later, in "Green," dealing with the suspicion for her role in "the old aristocratic society." In "The Invisible Window," set in 2016, three Chinese women meet in a Paris cathedral to reminisce about their involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, while the title story traces the rise and fall of a famous guzheng player during Mao Zedong's reign. Sze-Lorrain effortlessly evokes the spirit of each setting, be it the ardent fervor of nationalism during the Chinese Civil War or the seedy glamor of a dive bar in Paris, and she imbues her characters with haunting melancholy as victims "doomed to the mishaps of verity and the equally hurtful edges of fiction." This author is one to watch.
