The Phoenix Pencil Company
A Novel
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3.9 • 70 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK
“The Phoenix Pencil Company is a masterful blending of history, fantasy, and romance that sank into my heart . . . This book had me smiling through my tears.” — Fonda Lee, author of the Green Bone Saga
In this dazzling debut novel, a hidden and nearly forgotten magic—of Reforging pencils, bringing the memories they contain back to life—holds the power to transform a young woman’s relationship with her grandmother, and to mend long-lost connections across time and space.
Monica Tsai spends most days on her computer, journaling the details of her ordinary life and coding for a program that seeks to connect strangers online. A self-proclaimed recluse, she's always struggled to make friends and, as a college freshman, finds herself escaping into a digital world, counting the days until she can return home to her beloved grandparents. They are now in their nineties, and Monica worries about them constantly—especially her grandmother, Yun, who survived two wars in China before coming to the States, and whose memory has begun to fade.
Though Yun rarely speaks of her past, Monica is determined to find the long-lost cousin she was separated from years ago. One day, the very program Monica is helping to build connects her to a young woman, whose gift of a single pencil holds a surprising clue. Monica’s discovery of a hidden family history is exquisitely braided with Yun’s own memories as she writes of her years in Shanghai, working at the Phoenix Pencil Company. As WWII rages outside their door, Yun and her cousin, Meng, learn of a special power the women in their family possess: the ability to Reforge a pencil’s words. But when the government uncovers their secret, they are forced into a life of espionage, betraying other people’s stories to survive.
Combining the cross-generational family saga and epistolary form of A Tale for the Time Being with the uplifting, emotional magic of The Midnight Library, Allison King’s stunning debut novel asks: who owns and inherits our stories? The answers and secrets that surface on the page may have the unerasable power to reconnect a family and restore a legacy.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Magical powers meet computer science in Allison King’s touching novel about the ways different generations connect. The narrative tells two interlocking stories across two timelines. One happens during World War II in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, where young cousins Yun and Meng are forced to use their unusual familial gift: the mystical ability to make a pencil stand up, take to the page, and reveal the last thing it was used to write. The other timeline follows Yun’s American granddaughter, a college student tech whiz named Monica, who’s trying to reunite the long-separated Yun and Meng, now in their nineties. King handles Monica and Yun’s drastically different voices beautifully, making each sound totally natural as their sagas intersect across decades and continents. And with side quests ranging from romantic tension to the dangers of data mining, there are surprises around every bend. The Phoenix Pencil Company is an engrossing tale of legacy and memory, and how it all fits together.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
King's powerful debut blends magical realism, family history, and the power of storytelling in a multigenerational tale of memory and identity. College freshman Monica Tsai is caught between her rigorous computer science studies program and caring for her grandmother, Yun, who has Alzheimer's. When Monica stumbles upon a family secret—pencils made by her grandmother's company in Shanghai during WWII possess the mystical ability to "Reforge" written words into lived memories—she unearths a hidden family history of espionage, betrayal, and survival spanning from wartime China to modern-day Massachusetts. As Monica pieces together the past, she forms an unexpected bond with Louise, an ambitious archivist with her own stake in the story, and grapples with the implications of her tech professor's digital journal project, EMBRS, which echoes the Reforging ability in an unsettling way. King nimbly navigates themes of intergenerational trauma, privacy, and the evolving nature of storytelling to craft a novel that is simultaneously intimate and expansive. Though some elements, particularly the romance and EMBRS subplots, feel underdeveloped, the novel's heart lies in its thoughtful exploration of who decides what history to preserve. It's a poignant magical realist tale that's sure to find fans.
Customer Reviews
Captivating and Strange
I loved the meaning of family love that this book revealed. The vehicle of communication through reforging of pencils was difficult for me to watch unfold, not to mention a squemish disgust for taking the lead of a pencil into one’s bloodstream. The conclusion, however, was lovely.
Loved!
A magical book.