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.

"Nonsense, mystery, and magic." The mainstays of childhood. Or so they should be. In Celeste Ng's dystopic not-so-distant-future novel, stories and poems figure heavily in the fight against tyranny. The novel is beautiful and distressing all at once. Rather than solely focused on the political, Ng crafts her tale around 12 year old Bird (aka Noah), whose mother has seemingly abandoned him in the wake of the Crisis, to live in a campus dorm with his father who works at the university library as a clerk, although he had recently been a professor. One is swiftly aware that life under PACT (Preserving American Cultures and Traditions) has come with many terrors and secrets, not least of which is children who have gone missing. Strange artistic forms of protest begin to appear, resistance in the form of yarn and hearts.

"They [the police] are equipped for violence, but not for this" the narrator tells us as the police stand around a tree that has been wrapped in red yarn.

The most impactful dystopias are those that are not a far reach from our realities--ones where we can say "It CAN happen here." While there are moments where the backstory of the poem (All Our Missing Hears), in particular, got a bit heavy-handed (hits you over the head with the message and drags on a bit), the book is full of grace and small acts of heroism that blossom into resistance. But it is also about people and relationships. For once, I loved the ending, as it was real in feeling and drove home the point of the book better than some of the more obvious attempts at a cautionary tale. And yes, librarians might save the world.

Lucy Liu's reading was near perfect -- without caricature, but just subtle enough to clearly define the individual characters. ( )

This was good, I didn't give it 4 stars because Part 2 was harder to enjoy. However, as a whole, I found the story moving and dramatic. I found myself wanting to know MORE about the characters and the world itself. ( )

A boy whose mother left the family seeks to find her when he is 12. She is a controversial Asian poet who protests children of Asians being taken from their parents. I can't decide if this ever really happened or not. ( )

Our Missing Hearts is a dystopian novel that draws upon the actions of historic authoritarian governments and current events. Set in the United States in the near future after a global cataclysm called the "Crisis" that leads to the enactment of PACT (The Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act). The gist of this act is holding China responsible for the Crisis and legalized discrimination against Chinese-Americans (and other East Asians), including separation of families.

The novel is told from the point of view of 12-year-old Noah Gardener, known by the nickname "Bird," a child raised by his white father Ethan in Cambridge, after his Chinese-American mother Margaret goes missing. The novel begins with Bird receiving a letter from Margaret. This prompts him to learning more about his mother's artist/activist activities and ultimately take a bus to New York City to seek her out in person. Along the way he finds help from the staff of libraries that have been stripped of most of their books.

This is a difficult time to read about a dystopian America, especially when all the elements of PACT already exist in our time in one way or another. But Ng also reminds us of the power of hope expressed through Margaret's protests through art. ( )

Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts is a slow, tense yet tender exploration of a family separated in the wake of a dystopian future eerily similar to our contemporary United States and the bond between a mother and the son she had to abandon. It is the definitive dystopian work of this burgeoning decade, pulling intensely from a number of current issues facing America, including the push for book bans in both school and public libraries in the name of protecting children, growing anti-Asian sentiment exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the history (and present) of removing children from their families as a means of political control. While it does suffer from rather heavy-handed exposition for a sizable chunk of the novel, Ng's most recent novel still shines when it focuses on the power of words and the tenuous dynamic between the protagonist, Bird Gardner, and his mother.

The novel is told from two perspectives, Bird Gardner and his mother, Margaret Miu, as they go on a journey to reunite and understand who each other has become in their absence against the backdrop of a growing, odd little rebellion. Bird can barely remember life with his mother before she was taken by him due to her violations of PACT—Preserving American Culture and Traditions—which allow for children to be removed from their homes and separated from their parents in the name of preventing the spread of "dangerous" or "un-American" views. Suddenly, Bird receives a mysterious postcard from her, which sends him on a quest that has him traversing the hollow shells of public libraries and the streets of New York City to find his mother. When he finds her, Margaret shares why she had to leave him and, afterwards, all the testimonials she's gathered of other parents whose children were taken under PACT. The two slowly rebuild their bond as Margaret finalizes her act of defiance and an old promise to a mother: tell their stories.

As always, Celeste Ng's prose is beautifully rendered. She has such a knack for creative, compelling metaphors that serve to conjure a distinct image and tone throughout all her books. It makes moments of tenderness, of violence, of hope all the more guttural to the reader.

"Her cries wordless sounds, hanging in the air like shards of glass."

My one qualm, as stated earlier, is that the novel is particularly heavy-handed with the exposition towards the middle half of this book once Bird and Margaret are reunited. I think it is important to delve into the backstory of Margaret to understand her willing naivety and the way her perspective on PACT shifts once her own words became a calling card for anti-PACT sentiment and protests against the re-placement of children. However, it grinds the momentum to a halt with extended flashbacks which, at moments, feel more like a history textbook. Unfortunately, the narrative and Bird's perspective as a child who cannot remember the Crisis strains against the idea of "show, don't tell" and struggles to convey exposition in a seemingly organic manner.

I think dystopian fiction lives or dies by its conclusion and Our Missing Hearts is no exception. I remember reading both 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 in my senior year of high school as part of a dystopian unit for my AP Literature class. I enjoyed both, but I always preferred the latter due to its more ambiguous, but still hopeful ending. I will not spoil the ending of this book for those who have not read it, but there is a solid balance of stakes and hope for the future of this United States. It recognizes that part of the success of discriminatory and fascist institutions is individualism and a willing ignorance to the harms being committed against others. Others whose full humanity you do not recognize because they are not within your immediate circle of community. The possibility of solidarity is not entirely lost, though, and the hope and perseverance that the novel closes on is poignant and actually made me tear up while reading. ( )

Content Note: animal death, (critical treatment of) racism, fascism

Plot:
In a USA governed by strict laws to preserve American culture, twelve-year-old Bird lives with his father, a former linguist turned librarian. It has only been the two of them since Bird’s Chinese-American mother Margaret left the family three years prior. Bird has learned to disavow his mother and her poetry that has become a symbol for the resistance against the state of politics. But then he receives a cryptic letter that must be from her and goes on a mission to figure out what is actually going on.

Our Missing Hearts imagines a future USA that could very well be its present, exploring the cruelties in and of a totalitarian system in a poetic manner.

Read more on my blog: https://kalafudra.com/2024/07/15/our-missing-hearts-celeste-ng/ ( )

This is one of those books that when you finish, you sit in silence for at least a solid 20 minutes to just reflect on the words you read/listened to and how they connect to the reality that we live in today. It was one of those stories throughout the entire story I felt like I was just gliding through it, and then in the last couple of pages, all of it hits you in the gut and the meaning, and the context, and the message all comes together and connects and just leaves you sitting in awe and shock and just simple but profound sadness. It truly is a gorgeous story, with such a profound and important message about belonging, identify, love, hope, group think, and the pitfalls of society. Highly recommend. ( )

Autocracy has changed the political landscape of the United States. Asians and immigrants are suspicious and shunned. The location of novel is New York State and Bird is a mixed race Asian who doesn’t fit in at school. Bright and wary his only friend is Sophia. ( )

Book on CD narrated by Lucy Liu

From the book jacket: Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. His mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet 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 pulled into a quest to find her.

My reaction
This was uncomfortably plausible. Ng holds a magnifying glass to current and past events and predicts the likely outcome, especially if the silent majority remains silent and complacent when “it doesn’t effect US.”

Bird is a wonderful character. He’s smart and observant. The political climate in which he lives has resulted in a kind of maturity beyond his years. My heart bleeds for his father, who, to protect his child, must hold everything he knows inside – never sharing, never discussing, never searching for answers.

I loved the network of librarians who were used to thwart the “powers that be.” The story lost a little momentum in the second part, when Ng explored Margaret’s story, but it picked up again in part three. There were times when my heart was in my throat. I can hardly wait for my book club meeting to discuss!

The audiobook is narrated by Lucy Liu, who does a fine job of it. She sets a good pace and I was never confused about who was speaking. ( )

This is a book that imagines a future that is dystopian but, frighteningly, all too easy to see coming about. Let's hope it remains fiction, not fortune telling.

Noah is 12 years old when the book opens. He lives with his father, Ethan, on a college campus in Cambridge Massachusetts. Noah prefers to be called Bird but after his mother, Margaret, left the family home when Noah was eight, no-one calls him Bird. Because Margaret is viewed as a traitor, Ethan who was a professor was demoted to being a librarian when Margaret vanished. Ethan is a man who loves words and books but fewer and fewer books are kept on the shelves of libraries. PACT (Preserving American Cultures and Traditions) is a bill passed by the American government that has become increasingly totalitarian. Dissent is not tolerated, children can be taken from parents for little reason, books are deemed unacceptable for a variety of reasons and people of Chinese (or any Eastern ethnicity) origin are openly discriminated against. Margaret was a Chinese-American and Bird has Oriental features so Ethan is always warning Bird to look down and not draw attention to himself. They haven't heard from Margaret since she left and Bird doesn't know if she is even alive. He tries to remember her by telling himself the stories and fables that she used to tell him. Margaret was the author of a book of poetry called Our Missing Hearts but there are no copies left anywhere. Then Bird gets a message from Margaret which invites him to come to New York City to see her. It's a long journey for a young boy but he decides to do it. In New York he is reunited with Margaret through the auspices of her friend, the Duchess. Margaret continues the story-telling but this time it is the story of her life. Margaret's book has been used as a rallying call for people protesting their children being apprehended and she has spent the last four years learning the stories of people whose children were taken. Now she plans to disseminate those stories in a very public way. When she finishes that she hopes to go back to being Bird's mom but is that a dream?

In this book, librarians are heroes of the resistance, passing along information, and people. Librarians are always my heroes. ( )

I liked the writng in this book more than I liked the content. this dystopian novel was very frightening and showed how easy it is for dictators to rule. it was upsetting to read this at this time in this state, country, and world. The first part was very interesting, but much of the second and third parts of the book were tedious. the ending came so quickly and unfortunately, was much too uncertain itself. it's fine that i read this book, but it is the least favorite of ng's books that i've read. i was personally pleased that librarians were portrayed as saviors, as so often that is true. ( )

In the timeless tradition of The Handmaid's Tale and Fahrenheit 451, Ng tackles a dystopian future that is woven tightly with reality. The country has made it through a crisis, but the PACT legislation that resulted from a place a fear has only increased prejudice and suspicion of Asian Americans. It's not much of a leap to believe this could happen, which is what makes the story so powerful. She focuses on the families whose children are ripped away from them in order to "protect" them from sedition indoctrination. Ng has been hit of miss for me in the past. I enjoy her books, but never before have I felt rocked by the quiet emotion this one held. It's a dark future, but one that is based in past actions of both this country and others. When we silence those who are willing to question authority, we are no longer free.

“If we fear something, it is all the more imperative we study it thoroughly.”

“Librarians, of all people, understood the value of knowing, even if that information could not yet be used.”

“Maybe, she thinks, this is simply what living is: an infinite list of transgressions that did not weigh against the joys but that simply overlaid them, the two lists mingling and merging, all the small moments that made up the mosaic of a person, a relationship, a life.” ( )

The library where I work chose this for their "one book" this year. One of the more depressing books I've read in the past 12 months. Maybe because I live in the area it's even easier to imagine, and maybe because it seems plausible in this election year. In an America post "crisis," Asian Americans are the out group, because people associate them with China, the major bad player. Not only are Asians the out group, but anyone not deemed patriotic enough can have their children removed! That is a really scary prospect, since if you disagree with the government, you will be deemed unpatriotic.

The book was okay for me; not as good as Little Fires, but thought-provoking. ( )

I listened to the audio version read by Lucy Liu. Generally I'm not a fan of dystopian literature but I enjoyed this book. ( )

Representation: Biracial (half white and half Asian), Black, Asian and Latina characters
Trigger warnings: Death of a father from a fall and a mother, blood, grief and loss depiction, physical assault and injury, animal cruelty, systemic racism, explosions, racist and sexist slurs, gun violence, murder
Score: Six points out of ten.
This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.

I saw this book hiding on the shelves of one of the two libraries I visit when I couldn't find the novels I wanted (that being Throne of Glass and The Love Hypothesis) so after some consideration I picked it up and finally read it. When I finished it, the concept initially sounded promising but unfortunately, it underwhelmed me. Perhaps the author's other works are better than this one as I don't want a suboptimal impression of her only because I started with a dissatisfying reading experience.

It starts with the main character Bird Gardner or Bird for short living in a near-future version of America where everything looks typical except for one law: PACT, or Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act. At first glance, the act is to promote American patriotism but it is a façade for a legal excuse for anti-Asian (specifically Asian American) hate. Here's where the flaws surface: I couldn't get over the fact that throughout the narrative, there are no quotation marks, which made it harder for me to separate dialogue from the narration. I appreciate the author writing a story with plausible worldbuilding that could exist in this world only in a few years but the writing of the characters missed the mark because I couldn't connect or relate to them. The government can also displace Asian children to live with non-Asian families, which felt familiar and displeased me.

I don't understand the decision Margaret Miu (Bird's mother) made to abandon her son to go live somewhere else (it could have something to do with hiding from the authoritarian anti-Asian government. Or another reason.) Bird lives with his father in the opening pages complying and conforming with PACT until a cryptic letter arrives at his house, and so he sets out to discover where that came from. He also tried to search for Margaret's books (one of them is a poem with the same name as the work, and another is about cats.) At first, he couldn't find it but one library was hiding it for 'research purposes' (I think they're preserving them even though there is now an Asian book ban but that begs the question: do they only ban Asian literature or can they ban other diverse works of fiction? Would such a work be prohibited if it was about an Asian but a non-Asian author wrote it? Say there's one about a non-Asian protagonist, but an Asian author wrote it. What would happen then? Is the rest of the world this totalitarian or is it only America? These questions remain unanswered, much to my confusion.

Bird goes to Margaret's house and that's where the backstory begins (there's a lot of it, and unfortunately, it leaves not much room for the plot) detailing how PACT came to be and the only reason for that is that after the economic Crisis, America played the blame game, used Asians as a scapegoat and created PACT as a lawful excuse for hate crimes against them. I enjoyed reading that and the silent protests, but I wished there was more substance to what I read. The conclusion wasn't outstanding either as it was too open, letting me down. ( )

I have always loved Celeste Ng, so I had high expectations. I'm not sure if they were met all the way, but I still enjoyed this melancholic story. ( )

First, I do not like fantasy and this book, Our Missing Hearts, presents a bleak picture of the future. The book reminds me of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. The story centers on Noah nicknamed Bird and his quest to be reunited with his mother, Margaret Mui, a poet and freedom fighter. PACT (Preserving American Culture and Traditions) controls all aspects of life, like Big Brother watching over every citizen. Any infringement and PACT jumps into the equation and quickly smothers the rebellion. This novel alarmingly shows America in this distasteful mode. The story frightens an individual into apathy and depression. ( )

So good and timely ( )

A beautifully written depiction of America as a socialist country with the federal government granted full control over our lives. Depressing story which reminded me of the way Jews were isolated, then robbed and beaten, and killed in the name of progress in Germany. Jews then were hard-working, took responsibility for their lives, and successful. In Ng's new world order, the scapegoat for all evils is placed on Asians and anyone who appears Asian. Reading Our Missing Hearts felt like a preview of things already in lined up in America. Anyone who works hard and plans for the future will have it ripped from them and distributed by the government.
Like George Orwell's predictions, Ng's may also fall on deaf ears and blind eyes.
In America today, Asians and Caucasians are being blamed for every ill in society, past and present. ( )

The U.S. in the near future. It has become a fascist and nativist country, and after a monster Depression called the Crisis, the people live under a draconian law which seeks to "preserve American culture and traditions." A young boy's mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet, has disappeared. Because of their marriage, her husband has been demoted from a professorship to shelving books in his university library. The boy, Bird, goes in search of his mother and finds her in NYC. Librarians all over the country clandestinely try to reunite families whose children have been ripped from them and sent elsewhere because of "anti-American influences." There is terrible prejudice against all Orientals, because of the positive way China is economically. In her small way, Margaret fights back against the government. Maybe this rebellion is the start of a positive movement. This was a thinking person's novel, some episodes similar to what has gone on recently. ( )