Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in Harvard’s library. He knows not to ask too many questions, stand out too much, stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve ‘American culture’ in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic – including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.
Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her. His journey will take him through the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken and finally to New York, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
Our Missing Hearts is a story about the power – and limitations – of art to create change in the world, the lessons and legacies we pass onto our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact. Celeste Ng has penned yet another powerful novel dealing with family and race relations in America – it’s at once disturbing, thought-provoking and moving. Ng’s debut novel Everything I Never Told You and her second novel Little Fires Everywhere were both New York Times bestsellers. One of Reese’s Book Club picks, Little Fires Everywhere was also adapted into a TV series starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington. Now a household name in American fiction, Ng’s highly anticipated third novel packs a punch.
In this novel, Ng has imagined an America in the not-too-distant future that is shocking yet not so far-fetched as to be unimaginable. As she wrote in her afterword, much of the PACT (Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act) which dictates lives in this novel, is based upon real discrimination against Asian-Americans happening today. She also touches upon the forced removal of children from families, demonstrating how many of these supposedly dystopian practices are right in front of our eyes already. The banning of books, crackdown on artistic freedoms and removal of the right to protest are all factors of life which the young protagonist Bird learns to understand. The backstory into his mother Margaret’s life as a persecuted writer is heart-breaking and raw. The journey of Bird and Margaret to find one another is central here and illuminates the power of this relationship.
Our Missing Hearts is a devastatingly poignant and timely novel, which shines a light on racial discrimination and social inequality. The perfect novel for book clubs, this is sure to be a conversation starter for many readers.
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