BookLife Review: Homeseeking, a novel (Karissa Chen, author) by Carol O’Day

Historical fiction, Shanghai, Taiwan, Los Angeles, WWII to 2008, star-crossed lovers, Japanese occupation of China, Nationalist Army, rise of Communist Party in China, mature protagonists

Haiwen and Suchi meet as school children in Shanghai during World War II, when Shanghai was occupied by the Japanese. Haiwen is a violin prodigy from a wealthy family who fell upon hard times and moved to the poorer neighborhood of Shanghai where Suchi’s family lived and her father operated a bookstore. Suchi is impish, curious and energetic, and Haiwen is introverted, obedient and quiet. On Haiwen’s first day at his new school Suchi shares her lunch with him and the two become fast friends.

As Suchi and Haiwen grow, they fall in love and become inseparable. When China mounts a battle to oust the Japanese, and Communism brews in opposition to the Japanese Nationalists, the army calls for every family with more than one son to contribute a son to the Nationalist Army. Haiwen is underage, but his elder brother is married and expecting a baby. Haiwen secretly enlists to save his brother. The Nationalist Army decamps to Taiwan to begin its campaign and Haiwen spends the next forty-five years away from his homeland with little to no information about what became of his family, or Suchi after the Communists eventually rose to power in China. As a member of the Nationalist Army, Haiwen could not return to Shanghai. He takes a job with a textile manufacturer and eventually arrives in Los Angeles.

Suchi is heart-broken when Haiwen leaves for the Army. Resigned she assumes a role in her father’s bookstore, but when the Communist regime rises, her parents fear for her and her sister and send them to Hong Kong. Without resources the sisters take menial jobs and attempt to get by. The sisters spend years in poverty and without contact from their family or from Haiwen. Suchi embraces an opportunity to work in a nightclub where she can earn more money. She is spotted by a wealthy patron who pays for her company for conversation. Suchi resists until she no longer can and agrees to marry him. tHer husband is unfaithful, unkind, controlling and abusive. But the couple has a son, Samson, and Suchi endures two decades in an unhappy marriage to protect(and keep) her son. When Samson departs for university in the United States, she flees and reunites with her sister who has emigrated and found success in fashion design.

The novel opens in the early 2000s when Haiwen are both living in Los Angeles and spot each other at a market. Haiwen’s chapters recount his story from the present day back in time and Suchi’s story is told from her childhood forward. Together they cover the decades of their respective lives from the 1940s to 2008. Haiwen is eager to reconnect when they meet in Los Angeles. Suchi is determined to leave her painful past firmly behind her.

Some of the narrative drags. Suchi’s isolation and resistance to making space in her life for Haiwen is not particularly well drawn and seems at times to be an artifice to sustain the author’s need to unfold the novel’s narrative arc. The two protagonists are each sympathetic and yet they are somehow lackluster. At times the author relies on some trite metaphors about the moon or the skies in a misfired attempt to set a mood. While the novel is an effective device for sharing the history of Shanghai and Taiwan in WWII and the post war lead up to and through the Communist regime in China, in some ways the cities and the history obscures the power of the characters. As a reader, I struggled to attach to either Haiwen or Suchi and, in turn, to the outcome of their fated love story.

When unexpected news from China draws Haiwen and Suchi together very near the close of the novel, the novel becomes more compelling. The twist that delivers the story’s ending is a good one and the ending of the novel is beautiful and almost ethereal.

Please support BookLife: Reviews for Readers and independent booksellers by purchasing Homeseeking from the BookLife shop using the Bookshop.org link below.

Purchase Original Sin from the BookLife store on Bookshop.org here.

Or, if you are an Amazon devotee, kindly purchase Homeseeking on Amazon, using the BookLife affiliate link here:

Purchase Original Sin on the BookLife store on Amazon.com by clicking here.