This was the September book for the Platteville Public Library. This was, like a couple others in this year's selection, a tough book to get through. Not because it was poorly written, but because it was SAD. I don't have a lot of hope to begin with, but the 20% of this book was TOUGH. Then the story started moving along in a direction I could manage.

Here are some spoilers about the worldbuilding that don't spoil the actual plot of the book.


It's a dystopian version of the United States that goes ultra-nationalistic. The U.S.A experiences a terrible economic and social crisis, which borders on total societal collapse. Politicians, talking heads, and people who spend too much money on their suits and ties collectively decide that the scapegoat for this Crisis will be the Chinese government, the Chinese people, and, as a result, Chinese-Americans and anymore who remotely appears Asian.

At the beginning, it seemed to be a pretty standard dystopian novel that makes you feel pretty standard dystopian dread... and then you start reading it, and you realize that many of things in this book happened in real life. Relocation of children and families (Indigenous boarding schools, FDR's Executive Order 9066 (Japanese-American internment camps)). Governmental paranoia about "national loyalties" (Order 9066, McCarthyism). Intense surveillance of the public (PATRIOT Act). Racial attitudes towards Asian-Americans (all the above, SARS, COVID-19, Vietnam War).

The dread that this book brings is a strange, atypical dread for a dystopian novel. It's separate from, say, 1984 because we know that real firefighters are not state-funded arsonists. That fictional dread maintains distance from reality. But this... this is just real stuff condensed into a fictional moment.


This was also the final book club meeting for me. I originally planned on ending in May but was able to continue to attend due to a pretty open schedule. It was a nice way to end my time with the book club. This is a good book, and it made for great discussion, too.

This was absolutely a 5 star read for me, despite the difficult subject matter and need to put it down half-way through. It's intense, and there are moments of violence that may be triggers for readers.

The story is told mostly from the point of view of young Bird, now known as Noah, who is 12 and who lives with his father in a student college dormitory. His father shelves books at the college library, and Bird's/Noah's mother has not been part of their lives for about three years. It is during encounters at a pizza place, and recollections of a school friend, that we the reader learn of the PACT act and violent anti-Asian sentiment in the US.

At about the half-way point, we meet Bird's mother, daughter of Chinese immigrants, and learn how this violent campaign against not just Asians but also protesting the government and banning books began. How inflation and a loss of jobs led to picking one group to blame, with scrutiny of library shelves for subversive books being just one of the results. This latter is important because Margaret, Bird's mother, wrote a book of poetry that is one of the books removed from library shelves.

There is also the PACT Act, a law enacted during the Crisis, that allows the government to remove any children from any household deemed too "radical" for the child to stay. Spying on one's neighbors is encouraged, and signs are posted in windows of houses and shops both with messages that sound eerily similar to the slogans from "1984" by George Orwell.

How Bird copes with his loss, how his mother copes with her loss, and how millions of Americans are affected by the chaos of a few difficult years makes this a timely and prescient book. ( )

"They'd been dangerous, he thought; they'd loved him so fiercely it had made them dangerous."

WOW! This is a powerful read, one that I went into a bit lightly and wasn't prepared. This isn't [a:Celeste Ng|164692|Celeste Ng|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1663691487p2/164692.jpg]'s Little Fires Everywhere. This is dystopian, a world we both recognize and don't. One where our zealous need to control what people are consuming has tripped us in to an over-reaching government and a very afraid people.

This is the story of Bird. His mom suddenly marked a rebel, she disappears. But he's a young boy and doesn't quite understand what's going on. As the violence ramps up, his father further pushes them into hiding - changing jobs and abandoning their home. Bird is left to wonder about his world and his life and constantly try to understand the undercurrent of fear that's a part of the day to day.

As Bird grows up, year by year, he understands and comprehends just a little more. The world was frightening, one that is all too easy to see. Are we so far from this one? If some had their way, no, that's exactly where we'd be. This is a slow burn, one that spends each chapter ramping the unease.

I never want to live in a world where we pulp books because of fear. I think this is an important story to read, because I want this to stay as a Dystopian story - and not be our future. ( )

A dystopian novel that seems scarily possible. ( )

This story is a total downer, so I'm not sure how to rate it. I listened to Lucy Liu reading it, and she was wonderful.