In this collection of five stories, Chen explores themes of emotional isolation and dissatisfaction; her characters navigate turbulent interpersonal relationships while contending with sadness. In \u201cPerfect House, Perfect Life,\u201d a wife and mother feels the walls closing in around her, an emotional parallel to her downsizing of the family\u2019s residence due to an equally decreasing income. Violet Geddes is similarly despondent in \u201cMeditations on a Winter\u2019s Night.\u201d Violet awakens with little memory of her attempted pill-induced suicide from the previous night, though she does recall fighting with her \u201cimpatient, arrogant\u201d fianc\u00e9. Determined to continue with her day\u2019s plans despite her mild nausea and her mother\u2019s worries, she has lunch with her friend, Iris. Following the meal, Violet notes her detachment: \u201cIris stood\u2026rooted in the city and in the forward-moving world, while it was Violet who was leaving.\u201d Chen\u2019s stories are particularly intriguing when they delve into the mystical, as when Nathan, in \u201cNathan and Natasha,\u201d does channeling exercises that affirm his delusion-fueled manipulations of past romantic partners. This mysticism lends the collection a patina of otherworldliness, reflecting the characters\u2019 separation from the bustling reality around them. This is especially evident in the first piece, \u201cSong to the Moon,\u201d in which a man travels in search of information regarding his late birth mother only to wind up in seemingly supernatural circumstances (\u201cDespite his comfortable upbringing and many acquaintances and friends, he had often felt disconnected\u201d). Chen\u2019s prose displays real talent: \u201cThe overall atmosphere of the shared interiors is that of a dark and gloomy fortress, of a massive, once elegant project now in slow and valiant decline.\u201d However, the text includes passages that fizzle out after needlessly lengthy descriptions, and could benefit from more rigorous proofreading. These issues aside, Chen\u2019s stories have good bones and deftly examine the deeply human condition of loneliness.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In this collection of five stories, Chen explores themes of emotional isolation and dissatisfaction; her characters navigate turbulent interpersonal relationships while contending with sadness. In \u201cPerfect House, Perfect Life,\u201d a wife and mother feels the walls closing in around her, an emotional parallel to her downsizing of the family\u2019s residence due to an equally decreasing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7636"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}