Customer Reviews

Distant Land of My Father

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Let me first explain how I came upon reading DISTANT LAND. I was in Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena, CA and noticed the book being promoted. I actually bought it thinking it was a memoir and only upon getting it home realized that it was a fictional memoir, in fact a first novel. Then I noted in Vroman's magazine that each year the city of Pasadena picks one book for the whole city to read, so that the city has a common cultural experience. For 2007 that book is DISTANT LAND. At the time I did not know the city of South Pasadena plays a significant roll in the narrative. Then next I had to over come the fact that I am not particularly found of novels told in the first person as DISTANT LANDS is narrated by Anna who we meet as a young girl in Shanghai in love with her surroundings and with her father. A Father who appears at ease with being a blond, blue eyed native born Chinese (born of missionary parents). The novel is epic (taking place from the late 30s to the early 80s), yet intimate and a very unique emotional telling of Anna's life and her Father's love of Shanghai which we discover consumes him as he commits one poor value judgment over another. The book is brilliant in creating a sense of place and character, you are constantly surprised and will find the last 100 pages will rip tears from right out of your eyes. I understand this is Ms. Caldwell's first novel and it is simply an amazing, entertaining, and enlightening achievement in what some might classify as an historical novel. But it is really in the end an intimate story of emotions, choices, and consequences, told through terribly real people that have to learn that love is
overcoming the serious faults of those we should (and must) love. The distant land of Anne's father may have been Shanghai, China, but it was really the emotional distance she felt when her father chooses his love for Shanghai over her and her mother. You come to fell this must be a true memoir as is so believable. This is an outstanding book and I trust you will be just as Wowed by it as I was.

I read this book in one day; I could not put it down. I felt as if I couldn't read it fast enough; it was like being on a train whose momentum I could not stop, and didn't wish to stop. The author's exploration of bustling, commercial Shanghai in the 1930's and the Japanese invasion of Shanghai from the perspective of the child narrator (Anna) rendered it very real; I had read hardly anything about Shanghai during this historical period, and the writing made me feel as if I were there. I could picture the buildings on the main street, as described by Anna's father and memorized by the young Anna; I could taste the food sold by vendors; I could feel the fear gripping the city as the Japanese invaded. As the narrator grows, the story takes the reader to California, where Anna and her mother settle after escaping Shanghai at the time of the invasion. The story is a poignant exploration of the relationship between Anna and her father, who decides to remain in Shanghai despite the invasion, and cannot bring himself to permanently return to his wife and daughter, even after his imprisonment later in the novel. As a child, Anna is almost awed by, and worships, her father; he is the pinnacle of a handsome, successful businessman. As she grows older in American, Anna is discouraged by her father's seeming disinterest in her and her mother, and grows resentful toward and emotionally closed off from him. Anna's father ultimately returns to California in an effort to renew his relationship with his estranged daughter. It is a tribute to the author's abilities that the reader cannot help but sympathize with Anna's father when he realizes that his life's decisions and hopes have been delusions, and that Shanghai never brought him what is truly important in life. I was truly moved at several points in this novel, by the author's exploration of relationships and the sweeping nature of historical forces. The ending was also very powerful.

This book is a treasure, a novel that transported me back in time. It is a vivid journey back to the distant land of the narrator's childhood, the city of Shanghai, her father's city which he could not bring himself to leave. The book is beautifully, historically accurate. I spent my early childhood in the Far East and have visited Shanghai. I recognized the sights, sounds, tastes, and allure of this magical city. But more than a journey through time and distance, this book is a journey within, to the depths of compassion and the narrator's own self-discovery. It holds a world of experience between its covers, blending human weakness and dignity, power and beauty. Reading this book is to follow the path with heart.

One of the best books I have read in years. Great portryal of Shanghai prior to the invasion of the Japanese and gives a well researched presentation of historical facts and the changes and hardships which this invasion brought upon the families living there. The story centers around the impacts on a young American family living in Shanghai (father, mother and daughter), and is told from the viewpoint of the young daughter (from age six to a grown woman with children). It focuses particularly on the relationship between father and daughter whom he abandons, by sending his family back to the U.S. (L.A) as he stays on in his beloved Shanghai and ultimately ends up spending a couple of years in war camp. I bought several copies for my fellow bookworm friends and they all loved it is well. We couldn't believe this was the author's first novel and are eagerly awaiting her next. In a word: fantastic.

This compelling family portrait spans over four decades and dances between Shanghai and San Fransisco as a girl, and later a woman, gets to know her father in his multiple incarnations- multimillionaire Shanghai "businessman," prisioner, betrayer, role model, and hero. What makes the story so intense is the fact that it is told from the perspective of the one person who is simulatenously loved and hurt by this man, her father, and her journey of umderstanding and love. Set amid troubling times in Shanghai, the historically relevant parts of the book are both educational and insightful. A must read!!! Would be great for a book club as well.

This book was great... the smells, sounds, sights, and tastes of Old Shanghai drip from the pages. Sadly, as Shanghai itself is transformed into a government bureaucracy¡¯s vision of modernity, books such as this are one are some of the few surviving places that the old city lives on. Ironically, the main characters infatuation with Shanghai can be seen again with the large influx of foreigners returning to the city in the past five years. If you liked this book, you may also enjoy ¡°Rice¡± written by the Chinese author Su Tong. This novel also takes place in pre-communist Shanghai and is centered on a Chinese organized crime boss.

The Distant Land of My Father is a book that was narrated with the innocence of six-year-old girl that continued with passion of a teenager and finally culminated in the resolution of a twenty-something, married-with-children woman.
From the beginning of the book, even from the street scene on the cover jacket, one is pulled into the hustle-bustle, romantically nostalgic world of pre-war Shanghai. The writer Bo Caldwell wrote with such authority and eloquence that one is bound to believe that she experienced life in Shanghai first hand. Though she may not have experienced Anna's (the heroine) life but she lived it in the book. I, as a reader, lived it.
I started the book with great reluctance, not because I never wanted to read it, I just finished a contemporary novel and The Distant Land of My Father seemed a book one would read during fall / winter months. The first 100 pages or so took me about two weeks, but I was too far-gone in the story to slow down afterwards. I devoured the rest of the book on my third weekend.
The novel is historical, it spanned six decades, and it is more than worthy of a mini-series, though I doubt they'll ever come close to giving viewers as much enjoyment as readers got. It certainly deserves a good mention in current literary classes and if there were six stars on Amazon[.com]'s rating, I'd given it seven.

This is the best novel I have read in years. It explores the themes of betrayal and forgiveness, commitment and impulse, and most importantly, the enduring love that exists between a parent and child.
The early part of this book is set in Shanghai in the 1930's. Anna lives there with her parents--Joseph, the son of missionaries, now a smuggler and millionaire, and Genivieve, the composed and graceful beauty. When Shanghai is taken over by the Japanese at the beginning of the Second World War, Anna and Genevieve escape to California, while Joseph cannot bear to part with the city he loves. Again and again he choses Shanghai over his family, and Anna resolves never to let him into her life again. But when Anna is an adult, he reappears and she reevaluates her resolution to shut her father out.
This book was magical. Anna's relationship with her mother is every bit as compelling and complex as her relationship with her father. What I really felt this novel stood for is the proposition that your parents' love guides your life from the cradle to the grave, long after they are gone. To me, one passage in the book stands out more than all others. Anna says, "My parents have been gone for more than 20 years, and every year I feel their love more strongly." I can't even write about it now without tears coming to my eyes.
The writing is so beautiful and the imagery of Shanghai is so rich. Also particularly beautiful is Caldwell's description of the various gardens that play a role in her story. This is a book to be read slowly, savored, and then passed on to your mother, father or child.

I had a different experience with The Distant Land of My Father than many of the other readers. I applaud Caldwell's detailed research and imagination until about the center of the book. She truly captures a small child's fascination with her parents. However, the book takes too many wide turns. It jumps from an extremely impersonal narration of events that happen to Anna's father to overly emotional moments at home. She creates quality descriptions for the first maybe 250 pages of the book and then its one Lifetime event after another. Her baby, her mother's illness, her father's sudden presence. The emotional experiences are problematic because half-way through the book you realize that Genevieve and Joseph Schoen's characters are not very well-developed even though the whole book centers around Anna's longing for her father. The characters are so stereotypical in some ways..the absent father, the codependent mother, the all-knowing grandmother. The perfect new husband that teaches middle school. While I am truly grateful to have read the book overall, for some reason I lost interest after about 250 pages when the book became a mini soap box. I hope that my sense of being pandered to emotionally was simply a misjudgement. I think afficionados of historical fiction will enjoy some of this book.

You have to hand it to Chronicle Books.
A publishing house known for its refreshing non-fiction and cultural oddities publishes a magical book by a woman named Bo that could easily make the list at Knopf or Farrar Straus.

Here is the high concept premise and I challenge you to pick up the first page and not continue. This is a fictional memoir of a daughter who adores her father and dreams to be like her mother -- set during World War II in a corner of Shanghai where stories are spun like so much colorful silk.
How can a San Francisco woman write a period story of China that seems so real?
Here is the first sentence which I read in downtown San Francisco
on the way to buy shoes. I then forgot about the shoes:
"My father was a millionaire in Shanghai in the 1930s."
And it is preceded by a hand-drawn map. Yoknapatawpha County?
A little Huck Finn magic to come.

Truly original and truly worth every penny.