A review by moonytoast
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

challenging emotional hopeful slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Press for providing me with a digital ARC of this book! (Please ignore the quite embarrassing fact this is several months late.)
 
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 WARNINGS: Graphic anti-Asian racism, on-page violent hate crime (p. 130-131), anti-Asian racial slurs, gun violence/police brutality, physical violence, death, moderate themes of abandonment 
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