The goose often attacks because its vision is skewed and misleads it to think the goose is bigger than everyone else. It’s an apt metaphor for nanny Yu Ling, a 30-year-old nanny in Beijing, whose efforts to dare and dream big are repeatedly thwarted by her circumstances and her past. Within 200 pages, the author expertly weaves in commentary about both class and gender, in a tightly knit story. The story takes many fresh turns as Ling has to constantly recalibrate her situation with her seven-year-old charge, Kuan Kuan, but it never loses the plot. Fluid translation is a bonus.
The treasured son of Korean immigrants, Jeon-Gi understandably has a foot in both Korean and American worlds, while also negotiating puberty. In his apartment building in the New York area tenements, he finds his place in the pecking order until that delicate equilibrium is upset and he’s sent away to summer camp. Lee delivers another winner, drawing a brilliant portrait of a boy who doesn’t understand what to make of the embers of cruelty that silently burn within him. That they may or may not have anything to do with a formative experience at camp is almost beside the point.
The idea of setting roots in a new place, of traveling “West,” is as all-American as apple pie. Yet, Jones is content with staying home in Thomasville, a small town in Georgia, where she owns an independent bookstore. In a series of essays, Jones recreates the joys of finding contentment in the everyday and of forming deep connections. Even superficial acquaintances are useful, she argues. A popular book podcaster, Jones is also a devoted Christian, something I couldn’t relate to. I skipped the entire section. But the rest is earnest and appealing in its homage to small-town life lived big.
The book has a neat premise: learn facts about various metals and then tour a related mine. So it is that we combine and travel in one neat package. We travel to a small town in the Czech Republic, to the gold-rich mountains of Georgia (the country). I enjoyed the travels that explore the remnants of a bygone industry. But the facts about each metal got a tad boring. The format would have been better served if the author had narrated a story related to just a fact or two. A small nit to pick in an otherwise delightful book.
