Without the fairy-tale trappings, Margaret comes across as perhaps too good to be true, a brave and self-sacrificing artist whose inner life remains annoying opaque. The novel then broadens out - or, less charitably, becomes diffused - as it documents the life of Margaret, past and present.

More: Q&A with author Jane Wolfe Bexley native and author Jane Wolfe pens book about former coworker's life, career The first - and most engaging - section of the novel follows Bird through this fairy-tale adventure, which takes him first by bus to New York and then through a long trek through the streets of the city, as he makes his way to the castle-like home of a woman he knows only as “the Duchess.”īird is a plucky character, bright and sensitive, and well-suited to the role of hero. When Bird receives a letter - vetted by PACT censors ― containing only dozens of tiny doodles of cats, he realizes that it has come from his mother, and he sets out on a quest to find her, using the fairy tales she used to tell him as clues, and relying on a network of quietly subversive librarians to help him. “Much more civilized, right? Mash them up, recycle them into toilet paper.” We pulp them,” a librarian Bird meets notes sardonically. More: Book review Columbus Zoo the backdrop of a novel that's emotionally and factually engaging Poet Margaret Miu, Bird's mother, began to be considered suspicious after a phrase from one of her poems - “our missing hearts” - went viral during protests against PACT.Īfter she disappeared, Bird's mild, white father Ethan became the subject of attacks by neighbors, and he and Bird moved into a dormitory at Harvard, where Ethan, formerly a linguistics professor, now shelves books in a library decimated by the removal of books that the government deems suspect. Growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, under this regime is 12-year-old Bird, whose Chinese American mother disappeared mysteriously three years before the novel opens. One of the more insidious applications of the law allows for the removal of children from parents whose behavior is deemed to be politically suspect, particularly parents labeled as PAO, or “people of Asian origin.” The PACT encourages citizens to spy on and report the behavior of their neighbors. The newest novel - 'Our Missing Hearts' - by Celeste Ng, bestselling author of “ Little Fires Everywhere” is set in a world just slightly more dystopian than our own.Īfter of a time of social and economic turmoil called “The Crisis,” for which much of the blame was unfairly placed by politicans on China, the United States has settled into a precariously maintained period of relative peace and prosperity under the strict enforcement of the Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act.

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