Peach Blossom Spring - Melissa Fu

Author: Melissa Fu

Genre: Chinese Cultural Fiction, Historical Fiction

Rating: 2.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: Outlier review alert! Call this either bad book timing or a mismatch of expectations. But after a particular point in the story, I just couldn’t concentrate. The story is impactful and the writing, lyrical. But it wasn’t on the same wavelength as I was.

Story:

The narration begins in 1938 in the Hunan province of China. Meilin is looking forward to a happy future with her husband Xiaowen and young son Renshu. But with the Japanese attack changing her fortunes, she is forced to escape with the help of her brother-in-law Longwei and his family. What follows is a tale of sorrow and courage, with Meilin trying her best to provide for Renshu the future she had dreamed of.

The above forms the first one-third of the story. The rest of the story is divided between the US and China.

Where the book worked for me:

❤ The characters in the initial segment, especially Meilin, are so well-carved that you can gauge their personality and their behaviour perfectly. Meilin’s attitude is practical, praise-worthy and inspiring as she battles the adverse circumstances while still striving to keep her independence.

❤ When you think of WWII and the historical fiction based on it, you will hardly ever find a story set in China and focussing on the Japanese attacks. Most such fiction focusses only on the war in Europe and US. So the WWII part of this story was insightful and much welcome. It didn’t create any feeling of déjà vu.

❤ I loved the first section of the story that focusses on Meilin as the central character. It is well-written and engrossing.

❤ The writing is so lyrical, it was a treat to read, at least at the start.

❤ The various Chinese stories that Meilin tells Renshu are the icing on the cake.

Where the book could have worked better for me:

💔 Once the story moved to the US shores, I found myself losing concentration. It starts off well, no doubt, but soon starts meandering into elements that I didn’t expect, such as the political leanings of the Chinese students in USA. I think I enjoyed the Meilin segment so much that this was boring in comparison. To add to it, I didn’t find myself connecting with Renshu at all, and as he is the prime focus of the US narrative, there went my enthusiasm down the drain.

💔 You will appreciate (and understand) the subtleties of the book better if you are familiar with Chinese politics and history. I am not.

💔 There are a lot of time jumps in the story, creating a very hurried kind of feel. At the same time, the story spans a long time period (it begins in 1938 and ends in 2005!) and this led to a feeling of too much within one story.

💔 I found it terribly, terribly slow. It took me a week to complete this, that too because I hopped and skipped through the final quarter as I was so bored.

Basically, the book reminded me a lot of Pachinko. Before you jump in excitement, let me tell you that I didn’t enjoy Pachinko much as well. But Pachinko’s flaw was that it carried the generational saga one generation too far. Here, it wasn’t the number of generations but the drastic change in the focus of the content that created dissatisfaction in me. It was like two separate books have been joined together, one fabulous and the other tedious.

As the other ratings and reviews will tell you, a majority of readers have relished this book. So please read them before you make up your mind about this. I still believe that had I picked it up at some other time, I might have enjoyed it a tad better. I was reading Jeffrey Archer’s Kane and Abel alongside this one, and that is such a well-written family saga that this one paled in comparison.

My thanks to Headline, Wildfire, and NetGalley for the DRC of “Peach Blossom Spring”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.