Review: Chia-Chia Lin - "The Unpassing"

This is a story of alienation, poverty, family, Alaska, the 1980s, and friendship. It is also about how coincidence and life make for incalculable happiness and sorrow.

Mainly, this book reads as poetry stitched together to make a novel. I don't mean this in any other way than very good; this book contains prose that glows throughout. This book has made Chia-Chia Lin turn up in my radar for things to come.

The rhythm of the prose is what struck me first, but the story arc is also wondrous yet simple; those two bits combined make me want to go on and on with the text.

Above Turnagain Arm, along a dirt path that followed the bluffs, where sour blueberries grew low to the ground, there was a spot of earth that had fallen away. You could inch up close and look way down the scoured face of the cliff, and see a small, dark, rocky cove, which had surely never been touched by a human being. It was refilled and refilled and refilled by the unknowable ocean.

The edge of the woods flamed magenta as the last flowers on the tips of the fireweeds bloomed. School was just around the corner. Reagan announced that a replacement shuttle for the Challenger was in the works. My father must have been happy, but I hardly saw him.

The only critique I have is that the book felt a bit gone circa two thirds into it; it felt like its time had come earlier than the book did. I must confess that I read an uncorrected galley copy, so changes may have been made since.

Altogether, I recommend reading this to all who want to read a piece of fiction that feels real.