Reviews with content warning for Violence - Swimming Back to Trout River

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng

4 reviews

brianaisgoingplaces's review against another edition

challenging emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was a book that I had to take slow. Over the course of the novel, so much emotion bubbled through the characters and in turn to me. The novel takes place during China’s Cultural Revolution and beyond. While reading, I started to learn more about the time period and many of the things that came with it. It’s hard to imagine a total upheaval of life as you know it, and it was for many. Swimming Back to Trout River does a good job communicating the feelings of worry, fear, unrest, and pain that came along with it.

Throughout the book, we follow a cast of characters, each trying to make sense of their roles in the world and muddling through life in the ways they feel best. They make frustrating decisions and hurt other people, and those qualities are the ones that make them feel especially human. I couldn’t really say that I liked many of the characters in this book (maybe our main residents of Trout River, Junie, Grandma, and Grandpa), but for the most part, I grew to understand them.

I especially loved how this book was written. There were so many lines that actually made me stop and have to reflect, even going as far as having to turn the ideas over with others. The writing was really beautiful throughout, and I think that helped make the book all the more heartwrenching.

While I read the book, I had a sense of foreboding, and the book did not (but really did) disappoint. I get why the ending wrapped up the way it did, but I didn’t want to be sad, and I definitely cried oops.

I think I enjoyed this book infinitely because I read it as a buddy read, and because I read it after living in China for a year. It illuminated so many things for me, and I’m excited to take that knowledge and curiosity into my next year there.

Content Warnings

just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

My second to last of the 2022 Aspen Words longlist books! I brought this one on a trip with me and almost finished it on a single flight from Denver to Raleigh; once I started it, I just couldn't stop. Also, if we're keeping track, this is another one (which at this point is at least half of the reads) that I would not have picked up without them appearing on this longlist. So, my gratitude to the exposure this reading challenge is giving me remains strong.

In Swimming Back to Trout River, we follow a few main characters as they navigate recent history in China (including survival of the Cultural Revolution) and immigration to the United States in a variety of ways. Dawn is a musician who must give up the violin to survive the attack on arts and the bourgeois within China. Momo embraces the changes communism brings, at least to start, which causes a lifelong rift between himself and his college friend, Dawn. Cassia is struggling to deal with a traumatic personal experience, leaving Beijing to get away from the memories as soon as she could. Junie is Momo and Cassia' daughter, born in the late 1970s and mostly raised by her grandparents, after her parents' immigration to the United States. But Junie's life faces some major (unwanted) changes when a letter arrives informing her that her family will be brought together again, in America, to celebrate her 12th birthday. This novel unfolds these four stories, interwoven together, until the conclusion where we see how they all, in finale, intersect.

So first, like I said, once I got into this book, the story-telling just carried me along with it. I was swept up by the characters and their individual developments, which all felt very fully dimensional, considering that this isn't a very long novel. Momo and Cassia take center stage, as they are developed both as individuals and as parents, but Dawn is almost equally central, and Junie holds as much space as a sheltered 12-year-old can. Basically, my point is, the character development is wonderful. Along with that, I was subtly blown away by the story itself. As I was reading, I was just moving along with the storytelling, which had a very understated vibe to it. But after finishing, and sitting with my immediate thoughts/reactions, I realized that there was a very impressive depth of humanity in these pages, unearthed and brought to the light, that I didn't even fully register until after it was over. The intermingling of memories of the past, the choices in the present, and the interplay of those realities on the way a life unfolds, is an affecting framework of this story.

I loved the look at the power of art (specifically music) and the way that it inspires and gives purpose and connects people in a way that nothing else can imitate. It is a touchstone, a cornerstone, of culture across generations and space and I love the way it endured throughout this novel, even in the places where all efforts were put not only into ignoring it, but actively quashing it. As my partner always says, the art is what is remembered about past civilizations, more than anything else it is what leaves an indelible mark. I also loved, and this harkens back to my earlier point about the understated tone of the writing, the many kinds of courage and following dreams that don’t make always make as big a splash as far as a dramatic telling, but still are life-changing, routine shattering, extraordinary, for those who act on them. Feng writes, so meticulously, the way these decisions render the characters both recognizable and completely foreign unto themselves, their ideas of who they are and their expectations of who they would be. This is such a universal pattern/ truth and it's so recognizable, despite how different these characters' lives may seem.

I have a few other random thoughts that I'm just gonna collect here at the end. There was physical disability rep that I have never seen on-page before, with a really interesting way of adapting, based on the setting (rural China). A beautiful take, one that I am going to work to internalize, that Feng wrote on this topic, was along these lines: without the rest of us (looking differently from her), she’d never know anything was missing. I mean, what a way to reframe disability (a deeply needed and necessary way). This was also the second AAPI-authored novel that mentions the idea of "yuanfen," the sort of universe-guided connections between people, that I've read in the past couple months. The other, if I am remembering correctly, was Beasts of a Little Land. And it's a concept that I really appreciate because truly there are so many times in real life that connections appear that would almost seem overdone/cheesy in fiction, so reading examples of this cultural explanation for it was really cool. Finally, my two iffy spots. First, I can't decide how I felt about the foreshadowing of Junie's (seemingly big) future, without ever getting any fulfillment on details. I'm not against it, I just can't decide if I'm unsatisfied in a good literary way or in an actually unfinished way. Second, the end of Momo and Cassia’s story. I won't give spoilers, becasue it's a big one, but I just felt like it was too fast/abrupt for the rest of the writing style. I wish a similar endpoint could have been reached with a plot point that better fit the vibe.

Overall, this was such a quietly and tenderly handled telling, considering the amount of grief and trauma that it covered (on this note, I have to mention the content warnings for loss of a child and accidental-injury death, as well as the generall repressive regime of Mao's China). I sped through the compelling and nicely paced story and, while it's not a favorite of the 2022 longlist bunch, it is a very solid addition and deserved the spot and recognition. If you are looking for a well-balanced, multi-POV, character-developed novel, with an insight into finding your place in unforgiving/unaccepting worlds, the connective power of music, and a bit of family drama, then I would definitely recommend this one.

“After all, wasn't it true that to love someone is to figure out how to tell yourself their story?” (I noted this one right away, when I started reading and then it was actually especially mentioned in the author's acknowledgements.)

“It didn’t occur to her that he might have been lonely, and that sometimes the lonely used things to fill up the space vacated by people.”

“In physics, there were always boundary conditions, and you could understand a great deal about a problem by thinking of its two extremes. Music, it seemed to him, lacked such boundaries. One could go on and on in any one direction without ever coming back.”

“He was impatient for time to pass, so that in his life, there would be less yearning and more having, less becoming and more being.”

“It’s in our nature to give things value, and there are times [...] when we have to give these things up in order to stay whole, in order to keep going.”

“But there are certain decisions that seem so right in retrospect that they irreversibly erase thoughts that any alternatives ever existed.”

“She knew that the universe had a way of surprising you with its murkier logic. In this logic, you could give birth to one child and end up raising another. As atonement. Or remuneration. Or however that otherworldly accounting worked.”

“Vocabularies we’re simply impoverished when it came to obscure sorrows.”

“How strange was the ebb and flow of resilience in the space between two people!”

“He knew he was sometimes driven to hopes that were the wrong size for this world.”

Content Warnings

deedireads's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

Swimming Back to Trout River is an absolutely beautiful novel with quiet, stunning prose and characters. who hop off the page. I’m shocked that it’s a debut.

For you if: You like emotional stories that travel across borders and characters.

FULL REVIEW:

First: Thank you to Simon & Schuster for the gifted copy of this book. It’s really beautiful, both outside (textured cover! deckled edges!) and inside.

Garth Greenwell called this novel “one of the most beautiful debuts I’ve read in years,” and I completely agree. I read it over the course of just two days, but it felt like time stretched gloriously and endlessly as I did so — I was completely engrossed, savoring every word. Linda Rui Feng’s prose is gorgeous. Did I even breathe as I read her words? I’m not sure.

The story features four characters — Junie, a 10-year-old girl who was born without feet and lives with her grandparents in China; her parents, Momo and Cassia, who are estranged from one another in the United States; and Dawn, a violinist and composer who knew Momo when they were students. It spans decades, coming to life during Momo and Dawn’s university days during China’s Cultural Revolution, and continuing through the 1980s, when Momo promises Junie that they’ll spend her special 12th birthday together as a family in America.

These characters are complex, layered, and so compelling. I loved each of them and rooted hard for them to get what they wanted, even when that stood in opposition to what other characters wanted. I just felt so deeply for all of them. And the ending — oh, my heart.

I also really, really loved how Linda Rui Feng brought music into all the corners of the book, from major plot points to tiny little metaphors to the way the writing sings. Truly, if you love music (especially classical), you’ll love this book.

Anyway, this will be on my list of favorites for the year. Read it!

Content Warnings

hilaryreadsbooks's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

Linda Rui Feng's debut novel, SWIMMING BACK TO TROUT RIVER, weaves together tendrils of its characters' lives to create a beautiful, complex but interconnected web of life, death, and 造化—the human and nonhuman transformations of things. Momo crosses the sea post-Cultural Revolution to seek the American Dream and establish a home for his wife and daughter back in China. However, unbidden memories and traumas hold on tightly to these survivors and immigrants; past missed chances with people and things deemed "bourgeois" by the Red Guard surface tantalizingly close in a way that makes you catch your breath. These characters in the book, so devastatingly human and whole and broken, navigate emotional and physical loss and yet find ways to reorient themselves towards healing (and sometimes forgetting).

SWIMMING BACK TO TROUT RIVER is about leaving your roots, but also the ways that 缘分 (fate, destiny) brings you right back to them. Reading this book during this period of my life, locked-down in my childhood home after flying back to be with my mother in her last moments, feels oddly like 缘分, connected in Momo's unfinished aria of grief.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review, out May 11, 2021.

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