Customer Reviews

Hunger: A Novella and Stories

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Chang's stories are about love, memory and all the things that remain unspoken within families. The stories beautifully evoke the wrenching pain of leaving home--the pain of immigrant Chinese parents starting anew in America and the pain of their children, whose inevitable departures underline their parents' rootlessness and loss.

In the main story, Chang gives us a glimpse of a very private individual and his inability to come to terms with his daughter's development. It is a very well constructed view of immigrant life and the isolation it produces and the strenght of the characters in the novel to surpass their problems.

I really enjoyed Hunger. It was refreshing in its use precise, knife-like imagery and I loved the gaps that appeared between the people, small spaces that crumbled into ravines--the natural disintegration between wives and husbands, children and parents, language itself--all these are richly and painfully explored here. I think it is different from the other asian american writers I have read so far in that it seems to well from that painful blank spot in our childhoods, the place where so many things happen and are unspeakable because they seem unsolvable. She offers no easy solution to the dilemmas at hand but explores the possibilities through each character, man, woman, child. No one's viewpoint is disregarded. It is not merely the mother and daughter speaking. It is wider and deeper than this. Lastly, it brings in the world of music most vividly and honestly. Hunger, for me, rings true.

These stories are engaging, moving and beautiful. The prose is evocative, creating visual images with just a few words that draw you in and make the stories come alive. The characters could be any of us, as they struggle to follow their hearts while they are grounded in a sometimes invisible web of relationships that confine them yet give them strength. This was a hard book to put down.

If there is anything that typifies this collection, it is that it is about spontaneity: the terrible result of impulsive actions, of the impulse to declare one's success too early, to hope for a new life in a new country, to gamble, to steal. The prose itself moves by fits of passion, alternately concealing and revealing the deepest secrets of its protagonists who are often outwardly mute when it comes to speaking of their desires: sometimes we never even find out what it is, only the tragic results. I've been in workshop and this is not workshopped. It is a carefully wrought and balanced work of art that moves like a bird.

These stories are universally centered around the generation gap. Every parent has unfulfilled dreams and ideals that they transfer to their children. The burden inevitably becomes too heavy, or the expectations get lost in translation. Nothing ever turns out as either generation would expect. As appropriate to a book revolving around the theme of "Hunger", each story in this work is evokative of that vague feeling of sadness and disappointment that comes from unsatisfied loves and dreams.

I think this book is a first step to a promising writing career. Chang has shown herself an expert at evoking sadness, I look forward to seeing her display her other talents.

I loved this book. The characters are so real and the writing captures their state of quiet desperation. What is said is just as important as what is not said. Her imageries stay in your mind after you've put the book down and you can't help wondering what happens to her characters even after the story ends. I can't wait to read her next book.

The voice is so striking in every one of these stories that I felt as if the author was reading them aloud just for me. All of the work had the feel of "hunger," of someone desiring but not quite finding what she or he needed. An amazing work; the book gave me chills.

Ms. Chang's book Hunger has moments of genuine fresh prose but on the whole it seemed a fair representation of the kind of MFA program writing that is clogging publishing today. One wishes for the spontaneity of story telling exemplified by Ha Jin, and other writers of the Chinese/American immigration experience. Instead, one is left with the feeling Ms. Chang workshopped this novella and stories for too long a portion of her young life, and might have worn away the originality of her writing stone in the polishing. Let's hope her subsequent work springs from the heart--not class.

This is a beautifully written book. It recently won the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association (BABRA) 1998 Fiction Award.