This is a dialogue between a father and a son
I am still unsure what I feel about this book. I found it confusing in places

Good book, not like anything I've read before. Enjoyable from a writer who is new to me. Would recommend.

A man and his son take a reminisce their past and plan their future. They have regrets, come to an understanding and collectively look for a future. The son, however, has already passed away.

There is a kind of grief that is inexplicable to anyone else but other parents who have seen their grown child die. We are living in the times of pandemic and having elderly family members holding hands of their thirty year old child as they take their final breath is something no parent should ever go through. In this book, the father loses his son who is only twenty six when he is diagnosed with a brain condition and passes away three years later. And they start communicating slightly after.

It isn't the point of the book to wonder how this communication takes place only that it happens. Its a rapid back and forth the two are having, the father experiencing all the regretful moments from the past while the son relives the moments that shines his parents brighter than anyone else in his life. There are regrets, yes, with the decisions that were made by the father but the son urges his father to let go and move on.

For the first half of the book, the duo converse - with tears and apologies and there are few moments of radiating happiness. No matter the regrets the father exhibits, there is no doubt that he unconditionally loves his son. In the second half, there is tonal shift to the narration; from the conversation of life the family had to the son's journey beyond and that's where Fields of Joy comes from. While there is an emotional tangibility to the first half of the book, there is an untouchable distance to the second half as it takes a semi spiritual/philosophical route. The son goes through various doors and fields (of Punishment and Learning) to arrive at Fields of Joy.

There is indeed an idea of afterlife being chased and explored, however the threads that begin to explain these, don't take them to completion or too abstract. To be able to fit these ideas into such a narrative, the premise works well within the author's favor however the idea of afterlife comes half way through the book and there is little time to settle down and fully comprehend.

Fields of Joy precipitates multitudes of ideas of life after death, but the journey of father-son duo is incredibly heart warming.

Thank you to Netgalley and Sinoist Books for providing me with a free copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.

Frankly speaking, I wanted to read this book because of the curiosity I had once I read the synopsis. It is not entirely a new idea but given the way, this work gives off really sad and melancholic feelings - I would say, good job. I think the words are carefully picked and chained too, it's beautiful :)

The description of this book is so apt and stood out to me immensely as a nurse. The character development is really strong and I really related to many of the characters and story including and most importantly Zhou.

The first half of the book was very emotional and full of brutal honestly. I felt that the second half was more difficult as though everything had been packed in the first half and then just words were put down to finish the book for the second half.

I would definitely re-read and reccomend to others. Thank you.

God, I am about to meet you. I have only one question for you, and I hope you can give me the answer: when will I be together with my parents again in Heaven?


To bring the intertwining between the lives of ordinary people and people who have made names in history is the main strength of this book. Basically, this book is conversations between Zhou Daxin (the author) and his deceased son, Zhou Ning. Father and son keep responding to the endless exchange of messages between them. The father regrets that he couldn’t save his son from brain cancer which took his life at the age of twenty-nine and other regrets that he keeps listing throughout the first-half of the story. Whereas the son keeps reassuring his father that what his father has done to him in the past was understandable. At first, it looks as though this book contains only conversations between father and son. However, it contains more interesting multitudes.

THOUGHTS ON BEREAVEMENT

Some other books that I’ve read before which concerns the topic of bereavement are Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Julian Barnes’s Levels of Life, both are books about late spouses and written from Western perspectives. Zhou Daxin book tells the kinship tie between father and son who had troubles understanding the perspectives of each other during the brief life of the son. Rather than solely hearing the perspective of the father, Zhou Daxin creates another layer by presenting the thoughts that the son might have regarding his father’s regrets. More than from anyone else, the bereaved might require consolation from the deceased to ensure themselves that they have done the right thing and everything will be forgiven. In this regard, Zhou Daxin has given a voice to the son’s soul to communicate with his father which brings a cultural approach unique to Asian belief in the afterlife.

PARENTING AND GENERATIONAL GAP

The subject of parenting is also something that is constantly repeated in the first half of the story. I noticed how the father keeps blaming himself for his misconducts ever since the son’s birth, childhood, until adulthood, while the son assures him that it’s only a result of the generational gap between them. The author was born in the 1950s, who grew up with food shortages as a result of the disastrous Great Leap Forward and reached adulthood during the time of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Food was scarce back then, and every little penny would be saved to feed an entire family. And there were many people who got persecuted during the Cultural Revolution which deprives the father of any chance to pursue higher education at a university. While these historical facts are clear enough to be understood in history class, the son might take a different cue to his father’s action. E.g. Prohibiting his son to play video games so that his school achievements will not suffer (Father sees: Saving his son from failed education. Son sees: Father tries to take my happiness.) It is interesting to see the first half as a diagnose of a typical father-son relationship in the Asian context.

THE AFTERLIFE

Fields of Joy is the name of the place where the son spends his time in Heaven after crossing the River Styx (in Indian called Vaitarna, and in Japanese called Sanzu, there are many versions of this river which separate the realm of the living and the death) and passing through judgment in the afterlife. Heaven in this book seems to be heavily fantasized. However, I’ll have to praise the way Zhou Daxin tries to take into account several versions of Heaven from different cultures and religions, while not downplaying the main message which is highly intriguing. At the first half of the book, I was thinking if this book is mainly about the bereavement of a father towards his deceased son. But it’s a careful analysis on how regret has already been existence as old as humanity itself, with many historical figures present in this book (Einstein, Socrates, Voltaire, Mozart, Yuan Shikai, to note some). But at the end of the day, the question remains: “Did God regret His action for creating humans?”

CONCLUSION

This book looks simple at first but could be confusing for people who aren’t used to historical facts especially related to China upon reaching the second half. However, Zhou Daxin’s prose is certainly interesting to follow with its realist depiction which seems so vivid at times that even Heaven could be imagined clearly. The translators, Justin Hebert and Zhou Dan have done good work in bringing this book into English and use the kind of language which would sound colloquial to be spoken between father and son while still not abridging the didactical contents.

Fields of Joy presents us with a dialogue between a father (Zhou Daxin, the author) and his late son (Zhou Ning) who died at the age of 29 after a three year battle with a brain tumour. We are never told how it is that the two are able to communicate, but this isn’t something the reader needs to know.

In China, this book was first published, as far as I can work out, in 2012 under the title “Requiem”. The date is significant, I think, because it was towards the end of the one child policy in China (in place in one form or another from 1979 to 2015). One of the consequences of this policy was, sadly but predictably, a number of families where the one child allowed died. There is a Chinese term for parents who have lost their only child: "shi du" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shidu_(bereavement)). From what I can gather, there is very little literature in China that deals with this difficult topic, making this a significant work in its country of origin.

This loss of one’s only child is something that Zhou Daxin experienced directly and the story told in the first half of this book is based on, or perhaps it is better to say documents, this. For anyone who has lost a close family member, especially a child, some of this first half of the book will undoubtedly bring back some painful memories. The dialogue between father and son gives us details of Ning’s illness and decline but also tells us a lot about how the two men reacted to events. Zhou Daxin spends a lot of time looking back over his son’s life and blaming himself for what happens whilst his son tries to persuade him that nothing could have been done and he knows his parents tried their best to find a treatment for him. We know from the start that Ning has died, so it is not a spoiler to say that this first half of the book heads to an inevitable conclusion.

Whilst the first half of the book feels almost cathartic for Zhou, a chance to work through some of his emotions in the wake of his son’s death, the second becomes far more spiritual as we leave our world and follow Zhou Ning into a kind of heaven. This sometimes feels a bit like The Pilgrim’s Progress as Zhou Ning travels through places like The Field of Punishment, The Cleansing Field of Heaven, The Field of Study (which seems to change its name to The Field of Learning at some point) and The Door of Purity. This is where the novel’s title comes from: The Fields of Joy is one of the places in heaven, the destination for those who have purified their souls. This half of the book feels very different: it almost struggles to keep with the idea of a dialogue and wants to become a far more standard narrative with new characters introduced and both speaking and acting. This half of the book seems more of an opportunity for the author to explore his ideas about the afterlife, the meaning of our life on earth, and both the origin and destiny of mankind. He does this by having Zhou Ning travel around the Fields of Joy talking to various characters, many of them actual people (for Western readers names like Charles Darwin, Voltaire, Socrates, Albert Einstein and Mozart will be familiar).

So, it seems that we have a book serving a dual purpose. The first half of the book worked much better for me than the second half. The first half is emotional and focused, whereas the second half feels more like a drier, less feeling exploration of a multitude of ideas.

I end the book with rather mixed feelings. But a shout out for the subtlety of the cover.