Cover Image: Our Missing Hearts

Our Missing Hearts

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Member Reviews

An American-Chinese boy looks for his missing mother who wrote a book that was prohibited because it was considered against the status quo. His travel leads him to understand a world beyond his small town.

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Fantastic. Heart felt sci fi/dystopia with excellent commentary on the real world. The family dynamic felt real to me.

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I absolutely adore Celeste Ng and love all her other books. Our Missing Hearts was harder to get into and did not seem to have the same depth as her previous work. That is just my opinion. I will continue to promote her books and am hoping for more to come soon.

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For sure, this is emotionally captivating. (I have a physical copy of this one, so I will be posting my review in my main platform).

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This is such a great novel. Ng writes a compelling story about a mother and daughter and their love in a disturbing world that is--at times--painfully similar to our own. This was often a tough read but ultimately a rewarding one. Ng is an impressive and brave writer. Highly recommended!

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Thank you for allowing me to read this title early.

Unfortunately, this title was not for me. But I know my patrons will enjoy it and I look forward to suggesting it.

Thank you!

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Intense and frightening as the story lands too close to things that are going on in the world and has you wondering how close is the country to PACT. It was hard to read but at the same time compelling, well written and even though I wanted to stop reading I couldn't.

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“You don’t have a copy?” Bird asks. “Removed. Three years ago, it says. Someone complained, probably. Us public libraries-a lot of us can’t take the risk. Too easy for some concerned citizen to say you’re promoting unpatriotic behavior. Being overly sympathetic to potential enemies.” Bird and Margaret’s world isn’t exactly our world, but it isn’t not ours, either. The pandemic brought a sharp increase in anti-Asian discrimination; in this post-apocalyptic world, Bird remembers when his mother disappeared. He also remembers when the books were removed. And when those “caring” neighbors wouldn’t bat a lash at reporting any “suspicious” activity; when children began being ripped from their homes and placed with new families. Bird enlists the librarians and their covert, but dangerous systems of communications in his plight to find his mother, poet of “Our Missing Hearts” banned for its revolutionary message. Not unlike something in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, this book is a powerful message of what could and is happening already here in America. “Librarians, of all people, understood the value of knowing, even if that information could not yet be used.” I was on the edge of my seat this whole (and quite horrified just knowing what's happening in libraries across the states today. A cautionary tale and not a reality is what I hope this book is one day.

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Unfortunately this story feels less fantastical and like an accurate prediction of our future. It’s beautifully written, as all of Celeste Ng’s work is and while it leaves us with a small glimmer of hope. Hopefully we can turn our society in the direction of peaceful coexistence.

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I found the world of this book harder to enter than Ng's previous titles. I had to give it an initial DNF but I'm sure I will revisit it eventually.

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This was a beautifully written book, about the power of a mother's love and a love letter to librarians.

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While I typically am enthralled with this author's work, this story felt impersonal to me. Whereas her other books focus on slice of life stories that dig into relationships between families, romantic partners, and communities, this one feels much less character-driven. Instead, it feels as though the characters exist as a vehicle for the larger conversations that are happening surrounding PACT. While I appreciate what she was trying to do, the way that I struggled to connect to the characters ultimately made the story less impactful.

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I had trouble getting into this. The writing was super slow and just wasn't interesting. This was a DNF.

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Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Press for providing me with a digital ARC of this book!

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.

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Generally speaking, I am a huge fan of Celeste Ng's writing. No one plumbs depth of character quite like she does. However this one was a stop and start for me. I didn't immediately fall into the writing the way I have with her other books. I found myself putting it down and reading other things before I picked this back up. Overall I didn't dislike the story but something about the pacing was off enough that I was never quite immersed.

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In Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng gives us a chilling story of a dystopian future where children are taken away from their parents.. The government decides the parents are raising their children in an unacceptable political manner. This is a frightening tale of racism, nationalism, and what can happen when people look the other way.
I was given an ARC of this novel by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
#netgalley
#celesteng
#ourmissinghearts

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I have read this author's other books and was riveted. Something was missing in this one for me...it just didn't grab me like her other books. I may give it another try as I am a mood reader.

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Thank you to netgalley for providing an e-galley for review. Our Missing Hearts is a provacative timely story about 12 year old Bird, who looks for his mother. His mother is a radical protestor, who uses art installations to protest the new laws of oppression. This book feels like it could be written as a contemporary to 1984 but also to a very real possibility to a not very distant future. Futuristic, but realistic, dystopian but with a small kernel of hope.

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I love Celeste Ng and was waiting for this. It was so diffrent from her other work yet also filled with her familiar perspective and POV. I usually am not into dystopia stuff but this didn't feel like dystopia in so many ways we are already here.

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In Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng creates a dystopian future that’s sadly conceivable. Books are banned. Asians are attacked and treated as criminals. It’s a compelling read.

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