Our Missing Hearts - Celeste Ng

Fiction

Rating: 8/10

Bird’s mother is a poet and his father a linguist and they have always told him that words could explain everything. They would pry apart the stories they told him and allow the magic to seep in, making Bird believe that the world around him was full of possibility.

After his mother left, he stopped believing. He and his father try to live a quiet life under the rule of PACT, the Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act. A new apartment, a new school, a new job for his father and even new names.  But we can only bury our truth for so long before cracks begin to appear.

When Bird notices small red hearts appearing in strange places; on tree trunks, on sidewalks, on the spines of library books…he wonders if it’s a message from his mother. When words begin appearing alongside the hearts, he knows it is.

Ng’s latest novel thinly disguises many of the existing struggles facing society, the pandemic, racism, economic disruption and more in a fictional world unlike any I’ve spent time in before.  And while you might expect it to be a grim tale, it’s one full of boundless hope and infinite love.  The ending is so beautifully wrought the reader may be hard pressed to keep their heart from cracking open.

Library’s play a pivotal role in this novel, both as evidence of what we lose when we ban books from the shelves and as sanctuary for those who seek out the power that words and stories can have on the world and those that live in it. In this readers mind, there is nothing more dangerous than people that seek to erase stories. Unless it’s the capacious brain of a librarian.

Book Pairing(s): Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, A Song For A New Day by Sarah Pinkser