Tomb Sweeping - Alexandra Chang - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Alexandra Chang

GENRE: Slice-of-Life Anthology

RATING: 3.2 stars.

In a Nutshell: An anthology written in slice-of-life style. Some really good writing herein, but unfortunately, the writing didn’t work as expected for me.

This is a collection of fifteen character-driven stories, all focussed on Chinese or Chinese-American experiences either in China or in the USA. The stories are literary in approach, meaning they focus more on character development than on plot progression. They are also slice-of-life in style, which means we don’t always get a traditional start-middle-end. Both of these factors work well for me in full-length or novella-length fiction, but are a hit-or-miss in short fiction.

Without an author’s note, I couldn’t find a connecting theme to the stories except for the commonality of the Asian background and having a character-driven plot development. The stories cover a range of genres, from dramatic to fantastical. There is an undertone of melancholy to most of the tales. Quite a few explore the complications of humans’ relationships with themselves, with their families, and with outsiders.

The characters always feel like regular and relatable people even though they vary vastly in financial and social backgrounds.

The writing feels experimental at times. One story, for instance, is written in reverse order, with the first sentence providing the ending, and then working backwards with every subsequent sentence until we reach the introduction in the last sentence. This was a challenging but brilliant experience. Another has titled subsections, with each part providing the main story in sequential instalments.

What could have improved my experience with this anthology to a certain extent would have been satisfactory endings to the stories. The endings in many cases cannot be called abrupt endings or open endings. The best I can describe them is as ‘incomplete endings’. The tales felt episodic in nature, but with the final episode missing. I know that character-oriented stories don’t always lend themselves to happy endings or straightforward plots. But as a reader, I do like a certain amount of closure, even if it comes through an open ending, but definitely not by a sudden climax that comes without warning and seals nothing.

I can’t deny the beauty of the author’s writing. There are some brilliant lines in many of the stories, which is not something we often get to see in short fiction. She has the talent, and I would love to try a full-length novel by her to see if she can use that marvellous brain of hers to greater impact in the longer version of storytelling.

As always, I rated the stories individually. Of the fifteen stories, four stories reached or crossed the four star mark. These are:

✤ Li Fan – The story written in reverse. An easy favourite. Loved the innovative writing tactic. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫

✤ Cure for Life – The friendship between two supermarket employees suffers because of the age gap. Honestly, I don’t know why I liked this, but I did! 😁 - 🌟🌟🌟🌟

✤ Persona Development – A daughter takes her duty to her aged parents too far. Almost like a dark comedy with sad undertones. One of the few stories with an ending that made me smile. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟

✤ Cat Personalities – When you can’t directly gossip about your friends, you gossip about their cats. A fun tale. - 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Five more stories (‘Unknown by Unknown’, ‘To Get Rich is Glorious’, ‘A Visit’, ‘Phenotype’, and ‘Me and my Algo’) would have been added to the above list if they had provided me with better closure at the end.

In short, beautiful writing, slice-of-life approach, character-oriented storytelling, and sometimes-incomplete endings – these are the factors you ought to keep in mind to check if this anthology will work for you. Recommended but not to everyone.

3.2 stars, based on the average of my rating for each story.

My thanks to Ecco and NetGalley for the DRC of “Tomb Sweeping”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.