A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Starred review from June 27, 2005
A beautifully executed debut collection of 10 stories explores the ravages of the Cultural Revolution on modern Chinese, both in China and America. "Extra" portrays the grim plight of Granny Lin, an elderly widow without a pension, whose job as a maid at a boarding school outside Beijing leads to a surprising friendship with one of her young charges, Kang. Li deftly weaves a political message into her human portraits: young Kang, the son of a powerful man and his now "disfavored" first wife, is an "extra"—that is, as useless in the new society as Granny Lin has become. A hollowed-out recluse in the collective apartment block of "Death Is Not a Bad Joke If Told the Right Way," Mr. Pang—once denounced by his work colleagues as being "a dog son of the evil landlord class"—still appears daily at a job where he is no longer even paid, and spends his home life counting grains of rice on his chopsticks. Even the charmed fatherless boy of "Immortality," his face so like Chairman Mao's that he's chosen to be the dictator's impersonator after Mao's death, falls from favor eventually, ending his days as a self-castrated parasite. These are powerful stories that encapsulate tidily epic grief and longing. Agent, Richard Abate.

Starred review from September 1, 2005
If your idea of fun is watching cable news in the waiting room at your local auto repair shop while your new SUV is getting its oil changed, you probably won't care much for "Alternative Press Review"'s ("APR") admittedly leftist stance. On the other hand, if you have an interest in news stories and opinions that rarely appear elsewhere, "APR" is your magazine -it's a fine alternative to the corporate-controlled media outlets that pretend to serve up the daily news. Recommended for most academic and public libraries in more liberal communities.

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2005
In her superb debut, Chinese American Yiyun Li pairs short stories about life in an increasingly capitalist yet still viciously repressive China with tales about Chinese immigrants and visitors to America. Her settings are vital and her characters richly complicated as they cope with the painful legacy of the cruelty and madness of the Mao years and as they struggle to maintain their dignity in volatile situations and their sense of self in unexpected alliances. Yiyun Li is particularly intrigued with strained marriages, a theme she uses with great subtlety to reveal the precariousness of existence, the pointlessness of conformity when fate will have its way no matter how obedient one is, and the many secrets even the blandest lives can conceal. Unmarried adult children in fractious relationships with well-meaning widowed parents also kindle her imagination, as do the challenges facing gay men in a tyrannical society that once created a eunuch class. Self-effacing maternal love, extreme societal pressures, betrayal, and peculiar convictions all make for provocative and memorable fiction that is simultaneously culturally specific and universal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)