Elsewhere

May 1, 2023
"Elsewhere" is a fitting description of this literary buffet of a short story collection. These tales are set across multiple countries and centuries. To give an idea of the range on display, the collection's two best stories follow a woman falling in love with the Facebook page of a recently deceased stranger and a political plot among the disciples of Confucius. Even more impressively, Yan writes across styles to best serve each story. "Stockholm," a story about a literary conference, borrows from the blunt confessionalism of autofiction; meanwhile, the protagonist of "Free Wandering," a story about being overwhelmed by New York, is a direct descendant of Dostoevsky's Underground Man. This book is Yan's first to be written in English, and language is a major theme throughout. At a meeting of the Foreign Movies No Subtitles group in "How I Fell in Love With the Well-Documented Life of Alex Whelan," members debate the plot of a movie in a language they don't understand. In "Mother Tongue," a couple of Chinese poets commit to surrounding their new baby only with English. But at 6 months old, the baby can speak only nonsense words, and it's unclear if the experiment is working: "It was impossible to tell if they were Chinese or English, prose or verse." Language is a source of alienation, a way for characters to be told they don't belong. But it can also lead to new possibilities as characters find inspiration in misreadings. An Irish man with a Chinese character tattooed on his bicep believes the character reads home. In fact, it reads grave, and though it wouldn't be difficult to fix, he decides to keep the tattoo as it is: " 'Grave' is grand," he declares. In an interview, Yan said that she relies on the distance of English, her second language, to talk about her mother's death. In fact, a few of these stories touch on maternal mortality, a signal that the book's themes of communication are deeply personal. A bold, confident book that delights in written language even as it probes it.

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May 8, 2023
Yan (Strange Beasts of China) explores human connections and disruptions in this ethereal collection. “The Little House” follows Pigeon, a young writer who joins assorted strangers living in a tent city days after China’s massive 2008 earthquake. Despite being a vegetarian, Pigeon eats meat at the tent city, where she finds a sense of community. In “Shooting an Elephant,” a Chinese woman named Shanshan adjusts to life with her Irish husband, Declan, in Dublin, where she feels a sense of wonder (“In this foreign city, her anonymity soothed her, although she was struck that, here, anyone could turn to her at any moment and start a conversation about practically anything”). As winter sets in, Shanshan asks Declan to take her to Ikea, where the escalators and familiar goods remind her of China. As the story unfolds, readers learn about a rift between the couple and their attempt to mend it. In “Stockholm,” the narrator takes a solo trip from London to Sweden to speak on a literary panel, where her host, a man, belittles her for having to pump her breast milk, prompting her to imagine a postapocalyptic world in which she’s the last remaining human and survives on her own milk. Here and elsewhere, Yan combines dry and subtle humor with her evocative lyrical style. These stories brim with intelligence. (July)Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated the origin point of a character's trip to Stockholm.

June 21, 2023
After surviving an earthquake, a young writer named Pigeon finds solace in a community of poets. She befriends the other members of the encampment, discussing literature over beers and cigarettes. But at night, she dreams of her father, asking if she has actually died in the disaster and if this is her afterlife. So begins this captivating collection of short stories, which uses both physical and emotional distance to explore loneliness, loss, and the power of human connection. In one piece, a writer with postpartum depression flies to Stockholm for a literary event and navigates the journey as a Chinese woman, writer, and new mother. In another, a woman falls for a dead acquaintance through Facebook, imagining their hypothetical first date and obsessing over whether he is actually deceased. Chinese author Yan has written 13 books, but this is her English-language debut--and it proves clever and delicate, finely woven with a sharp wit. This subtle but brilliant collection will draw readers in and keep them enchanted until the very last word.

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