This book was beautiful and heartbreaking and had me incredibly invested...until about 60% through. There, it took a weird turn that I really didn't understand. Not only did some of the relationships in the book take strange left turns that bordered on inappropriate, but there was also a whole section of the book in the POV of the dead dog and his dog girlfriend....

While I still finished the book, this really threw me for a loop and lessened my overall opinion of the novel. I also, in the end, felt a little icky that this book really revolved around one young girl's trauma (CW: rape and assault) and how horribly her life was. There was more to her character than this, but it felt like this was the driving force of everything else in the book.

A Single Swallow by Zhang Ling (translated by Shelly Bryant) is the story of one woman - Ah Yan - told through the perspective of three men in her life - Liu Zhaohu, William E. Macmillan aka Pastor Billy, and Ian Ferguson as their ghosts look back 70 years later. The unusual narrative timeline proves frustrating because the story does a lot of “telling” instead of living the events and because the book never shares the perspective of Ah Yan herself.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2020/03/a-single-swallow.html

Reviewed for NetGalley.

It’s an interesting book and subject matter. I’m not sure how I feel about it quite yet but found myself interested in the characters and wanting to know more.

It was very interesting and moving. Also the cover was so very very beautiful, simple someone might say but oh so beautiful.

This was an interesting story in the sense that there are not many books out there detailing what Asian countries dealt with during WWII. I definitely enjoyed many elements of the story and learned a lot about China’s history, but there were other parts that I didn’t like quite as much. Overall, a good read.

On the day Japan surrenders to the US in WW2, three men make a pack that they will meet up again yearly, after their deaths in the very same place. Pastor Billy, an American missionary, Ian Ferguson, an American gunner, and Liu Zhaohu, a Chinese soldier, have finally been reunited. All three met in a small village in China during the war and share a bond with just one woman, Ah Yan, also known as Swallow.

The novel, translated from Chinese, chronicles the relationships between the men and Ah Yan, telling their intertwined stories and their relationship with Ah Yan. Each man loved her in a different way, and struggles to show her how. Ah Yan struggles as well, in a difficult time and place for a woman.

I really enjoy WW2 novels that focus outside of Europe to start, and this one really looks into lesser known information regarding what happened within China. The ghost men telling their story as a retrospective bring the time back to life, and provide an interesting look into the war. However, the relationships between the men and Ah Yan, as well as the men amongst themselves, really tell the true story.

A beautiful prose with grace and agony. Set in China after World War 2, Ah Yan a young Chinese woman who was betrayed in different ways by 3 different men, overcame it all. Ah Yan in their betrayal redeemed each man differently. She was quiet but powerful. A woman of many contradictions. Liu Zhaohu whom she grew up with and whom she loved dearly, had his young mind set on his country and left Ah Yan in disgrace. American missionary Pastor Billy, who rescued Ah Yan and with good intentions kept her from love and Ian Ferguson who saved Ah Yan in ways without realizing it.

The brutality of war and love don't always mix but there is a redeeming quality that pulled me in. The descriptive narrative and the character development cultivated struggle of survival. The strength of a woman is something to behold when done in humility. The historical part of China is interesting but it is those behind it that make an impact. A story that will stay with you.

A special thank you to Amazon Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest revie

It took me a little while to fully sink into the style and story of A Single Swallow, but was captivated once I did.

Told by spirits who have reunited in the afterlife, it is a unique perspective that adds a cultural dimension to this Chinese novel translated into English.

Two of the narrators are American, one is Chinese -- and for a brief while, we also hear directly from their two dogs! The protagonists' paths intersect during the War of Resistance Against Japan, and at the centre of their individual experiences was one woman: alternately known as Yao Ah Yan, Swallow, Wende and Stella. Each of the men has a different name for her, all of them loved her, and all of them tell her story through their eyes.

This approach adds another layer to the storytelling. For me, however, the distance from Ah Yan grew to feel almost misogynistic. I began to resent hearing about her from a man's perspective, and wanted to hear her directly from her, what she saw, felt and experienced.

What that tells me, though, is that Zhang Ling created a truly compelling character. I cared deeply enough for this "third-party protagonist" that I wanted to draw her closer.

Shelley Bryant's translation conveys distinct voices for each of the characters, artful prose and subtle yet ample glosses woven into the text to help us understand cultural nuances we might otherwise miss.

This is the first novel I have read by Zhang Ling and I intend to search out her earlier works. I highly recommend this novel to those interested in China, historical fiction, and translated literature.

My thanks to AmazonCrossing for the review copy.

This one is not for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my copy in exchange for a review.

I received this book complimentary from NetGalley but all opinions are my own.

The synopsis of this book seemed intriguing to me, but in the end it just wasn't a book I enjoyed. Too many characters and at times I felt lost in the storyline.

I feel like there is definitely an audience for this book, but it's not for me. It's not so much related to the story itself, but more to the way it was written. It could be the translation, but it was difficult to keep track of things.

I really wanted to like this book after reading so many reviews but it was very hard to keep track of the characters so many scenarios and situations that made this story very confusing and also somehow depressing..

I don't know if the translation got lost or what did I miss but I was around 30% and I kept feeling like something was missing like too much information was making this story not enjoyable..

I don't have anything bad to say about it the only thing that made me feel like I didn't want to keep reading even I did finish the book was the constant confusing and the too much information that made the story kind of lost.

I encourage you to give this book a try, maybe it was not a good day for me and the sadness made me feel so lost.

I received this book complimentary from NetGalley but all opinions are my own.
I could not get into this. It was very hard to distinguish the characters and voices. I just did not enjoy this. I don’t know why honestly, but I think the way it is written just threw me. I thought the characters died but then they didn’t. I just had the hardest time following this one. I don’t think I understood what the author was aiming for or why. This just wasn’t for me.

*received for free from netgalley for honest review* took me a minute to get into this book, and ngl it was good and i liked how things were told from one person to the next but omg the dogs and so much death, :(

4 stars for a literary fiction book that is a story of how WWII affected 4 people in a small village in China. This book was written in Chinese and translated into English. The translation is excellent.
It is a love story of 3 men, American soldier Ian Ferguson, American missionary/doctor Pastor Billy and local soldier Liu Zhaohu, all of whom fall in love with Ah Yan, also known as Swallow. Pastor Billy calls her Stella, Ian calls her Wende. and Liu calls her Yao Ah Yan "Swallow."
Pastor Billy teaches her enough medical skills so that she can become a rural doctor. I don't want to go into spoiler territory, but there is rape in this story and it affects how these 3 people relate to each other.The story is told from the viewpoints of the three men in flashbacks. The 3 men come together after they are dead as ghosts.
If you like fiction with a strong woman protagonist, you should like this story. It was an Amazon eBook.
Some quotes:
"Ah Yan had laughed at how my father spoke as if fog really had substance. My father had tapped her head with his bamboo chopsticks, and said, “You don’t believe me? Well, people eat dogs, dogs eat shit, and tea leaves eat fog. Look at all the good tea leaves around the world and tell me, which does not come from a misty mountain?”
"Time is a miraculous thing. It can wear down the thorns of emotion, gradually eroding them to dust, and from this dust, a new sprout grows."
"The sunflowers were full and solid, each golden face looking like a woman who knows how to flirt, free of bashfulness, turned to look at the sky. Everything was golden that day—the rows of finely scattered clouds on the horizon, the bees buzzing on the open flowers, the butterflies flitting through the forest, and the dew clinging to each leaf. I closed my eyes, imprinting the golden memory on my mind as I breathed in the golden breeze. When I opened my eyes again, I suddenly noticed a figure wearing a golden straw hat in the heart of the sunflower forest. "
#ASingleSwallow #NetGalley. Thanks to AmazonCrossing for sending this eARC through NetGalley.

I didn’t enjoy this at all. The premise was so good but the execution left much to be desired, being too disjointed, too rambling, with too much description slowing down the narrative and far too much telling not showing. It tells the story of three men and their love for a Chinese woman Ah Yang, also known as Swallow. A Chinese soldier, an American pastor and an American military instructor. Brought together by the war and finding themselves in a small Chinese village as Emperor Hirohito announces on the radio Japan’s surrender, they make a pact to return after their deaths to the village each year on the anniversary of the broadcast and reminisce about the girl they all loved. As the book opens the men are fulfilling their pledge and in a series of flashbacks their back stories are filled in. The only perspective we don’t get is that of Ah Yang herself. Although to compensate we do get the perspective of two anthropomorphised dogs – and that’s where I had to leave the book. It’s not terrible – but it wasn’t one for me and I remained unengaged throughout.

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this book. I highlighted this book on my bookstagram page, @brews4books, where I pair books with beers that are related to the book in some way.

📖: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ~ It took me 10 months to read this book. I had a very difficult time getting past the first chapter. Once I sat down and forced myself to just read it and get it done, I found I enjoyed the middle of the book, reading Ah Yan’s story. Unfortunately I was disappointed in the end that we never heard from Ah Yan. It was interesting to read about her from the perspective of each man who loved her, but I kept waiting for a chapter from her point of view. We even got a chapter from the dogs...but never the woman who was the center of it all. I would rate this a 2.5, but rounded up to 3 since I enjoyed the middle of the book so much.
🍺: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ~ Kombucha is a fermented tea that originated in China over 2,000 years ago. It is known for its health benefits and is brewed throughout eastern Russia, Japan, Korea, and China. All kombucha is slightly alcoholic, but in recent years brewers have started increasing the percentage of alcohol to make kombucha that is, as Jiant puts it, “all grown up.”
@amazonpublishing @netgalley @jiantkombucha #ZhangLing #ASingleSwallow #GhostAndMillie4Ever #Stella #Wende #JiantKombucha #ItsKombuchaAllGrownUp #NetGalley #ARC #GoodBooksGoodBrews

Thank you Netgalley, Amazon Crossing and Zhang Ling for free e-ARC in return of my honest review.

This is a story of a young Chinese girl through the eyes of three men who loved her. Three men - Pastor Billy, brash gunner’s mate Ian Ferguson, and local soldier Liu Zhaohu - agreed that their souls would meet in a Chinese village of their youth each year on the anniversary of the Japanese emperor surrender in 1945 after death. Seventy years later, the pledge is fulfilled and they exchange stories about the girl.

I found approach to tell her story through men eyes very interesting. The story line is not linear which gives the novel a special charm. I think all main characters are well developed throughout the story. The only thing I wished for is the girl’s, Swallow, perspective on the events of her life. I wish I could see deeper into her own story without middlemen.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to read this book. I'll be posting my review on Goodreads and Amazon

4 stars

I’m not much of a “themed” reader (not deliberately anyway), so I consider it pure coincidence that I happened to pick up this book to read the day before Halloween. To clarify, this book is not a “spooky” read by any means, neither is it any genre even remotely related to this holiday – rather, the “coincidence” I am referring to is the fact that this story is narrated entirely by “ghosts.” Actually, to put it more precisely, from the moment the story opens in 2015, the 3 main characters – American missionary Pastor Billy, Chinese solider Liu Zhaohu, and gunner’s mate Ian Ferguson – are already dead. Pastor Billy died 70 years ago (in 1945), Liu Zhaohu joined him 18 years later (in 1963), and together, they waited another 52 years before Ian Ferguson was able to join them on that exact date -- August 15th, 2015. Now, before anyone starts chiding me for supposedly revealing “spoilers,” let me just say that all of the above is already revealed within the first few pages of the book – to that point, the entire basis of the story harkens back to a pact that the 3 men made on that day in 1945 when Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced (via radio broadcast) Japan’s surrender to Allied Forces, effectively bringing an end to World War II. Stationed in the small village of Yuehu, China at the time of the announcement, the 3 men make a pledge on that historic day stipulating that, after their deaths, their souls would return to Yuehu every year on the anniversary of the broadcast – however, due to the 3 of them dying at different times, it isn’t until 70 years later that they are finally able to fulfill the pledge they made so long ago. As the 3 of them come together to reminisce about a war that changed the course of their lives forever, it soon becomes clear that each of their stories is tied to that of one woman whom all of them loved but lost, and it is her life that’s truly the focus here. This woman, whose given name from birth is Yao Guiyan, is simultaneously known to Liu Zhaohu as Ah Yan (or “swallow”), to Pastor Billy as Stella (meaning “star”), and to Ian Ferguson as Wende (transliteration of “wind”). Ah Yan’s impact on these 3 men is profound -- despite the atrocities and suffering she endures in the face of a horrific war, she not only finds the courage to survive, but does so with remarkable grace and humanity. It is through the memories of this extraordinary woman that these 3 “ghosts”, scarred by the lasting effects of war, are able to finally understand the truths of what they experienced and reconcile the regrets of their pasts.

Knowing that the story is set during a time period of immense devastation and tragedy in World War II, I braced myself for a sad and difficult read going into this one – while both of these did ring true (the atrocities committed by the Japanese army were especially hard to read), this also turned out to be a story of resilience, courage, hope, and ultimately, the redemptive power of love, which thankfully helped to balance out the story in the end. I found the structure of the story an interesting one – each chapter is alternately narrated by 3 dead men, with 1 chapter in the middle narrated by 2 dogs (yes, you read that correctly) that also played significant roles in the story. Given this setup, this book definitely doesn’t fit nicely into one category in terms of genre – I felt that this fell more into the historical fiction genre, with elements of magical realism mixed in, which altogether put a unique spin to the story that made this a different reading experience for me. What I liked most though, is that the author Zhang Ling (a Chinese author based in Canada), in experimenting with form and structure, didn’t neglect the cultural elements that are so critical in a story such as this one. I read quite a bit of historical fiction, since it’s one of my favorite genres, and one of the things I always look for is a strong sense of time and place, to the point that I feel transported, as though living the same events alongside the characters. Having said that, when it comes to historical fiction within the context of a culture that I’m familiar with, I’m also a stickler for getting the cultural aspects right -- which I’ll admit I was worried about with this book once I learned that the story was originally written in Chinese and later translated into English. Perhaps because of my background, I understand first-hand how tricky it can be to translate from Chinese to English (plus I’ve read my fair share of poorly translated works over the years) and so this is a particularly sensitive area for me. With this book, while I can’t say that the translation was flawless (because as far as I’m concerned, translations are never 100% perfect), one thing I did appreciate was the effort made to render the cultural elements as authentically as possible. Of course, not having read the original book in Chinese, there’s no way for me to judge the accuracy of the translation word for word, but I am encouraged by the fact that the translator chose to keep Chinese names and phrases intact throughout the story (for example – in Liu Zhaohu’s chapters, the translator could’ve very easily referred to Ah Yan as “Swallow” or their village Sishiyi Bu as “Forty-One Steps Village” but instead, she mentioned the English translation of those words only once as a means of introduction – after that, the Chinese phrases were used for the remainder of the story). In addition, as a whole, I felt that the author did a pretty good job of balancing both the historical events and cultural elements in a way that made the reading experience an immersive one, though admittedly, the chapters involving Liu Zhaohu and Ah Yan as well as how life was like in their ancestral village of Sishiyi Bu were the most engaging for me.

Overall, this was a great story – poignant and heartbreaking in many areas, but also ultimately uplifting. The ending I thought was fitting and definitely got me a bit teary-eyed. My one complaint though (and the main reason why this ended up being 4 stars instead of 5) is that, despite Ah Yan’s story being the most important, we never got to hear her perspective directly. While I feel that the author did a good job of bringing Ah Yan as a character to life through the memories of the 3 men who loved her, I think this would’ve been a much more powerful and emotionally resonant story if we had gotten to hear Ah Yan’s perspective as well, even if it was only 1 chapter or as an epilogue at the end. In skimming through reviews, I know this was a deal-breaker for a few readers and while it wasn’t a huge issue to that extent for me, I can understand why it would’ve affected the reading experience for some. Regardless though, I would still recommend this one as a worthy read, if anything, because of the relative scarcity of WWII-related fiction out in the mainstream nowadays that is either written from the Asian perspective or covers the events that unfolded across the Asian continent during that time period. Much of what happened in China and other Asian countries back then was no less tragic than what had happened in Europe, but in general, is much less talked about outside of Asia. Hopefully more of these stories can be heard in the future.

Received ARC from Amazon Crossing via NetGalley