This book had such an interesting and unique concept that I couldn't not read it and luckily it was an interesting and unique read! I was completely gripped by the mystery and the anxiety over the characters future and even though the story felt that it went by quite quickly it did feel very complete. Having said that I'd have liked for it to be a big longer and a bit more dragged out. I was left with so many unanswered questions but not really in an annoying way - it makes sense with this book for there to be so much left unknown.
Review on goodreads and storygraph

Incredible. A truly trippy and personal tale that edges between a personal drama, sci fi and thriller. The relationships between the characters are well thought out and the dialogue feels so natural that it could be anyone and their sibling or friend or dad just transcribed down. The language is easy to understand but still extremely descriptive and through very few added words sets whatever tone is wished for that scene by the author. The plot is really creative and interesting, I have to say I was very intrigued at the start of the book in the more sci fi aspects and that was my primary focus for reading more, but I began to accept it as the reality of this world and focussed more on the human aspect of the story, just like the characters of this world (which is just incredible writing). The ending feels justified and hopeful, even with how vague it is. I am about as blind to themes and metaphors as anyone can be, but I felt this book is especially strong in this manner. People much smarter than me will be able to dissect exactly what's going on here, but I felt the concept of change and rebirth and how to deal with it was really done in depth and well. You can say this book is about anything you really want to because it touches on so many topics and i think really is able to sum up human experience in all the complexities we exist with, for me, it was about mental health (just people and how they think in general), climate change and family. Probably because those are topics I'm focussed on at the moment. THAT;S how good this book is. Will not be surprised when it reaches a bestseller list.
Fantastic. wow wow wow.

Sunbirth
by An Yu
Genre: Literary, Surrealism, Magical Realism
Pages: 256
Rating: 4.5/5 (rounded to 5)

With its unfamiliar premise of the sun disappearing a fraction at a time, juxtaposed against the universal themes of sisterhood and family bonds, this sparse novel of 256 pages delivers a strange combination of a very powerful yet gentle reading.

Since An Yu's first novel (this is her third), I have been a fan. In my opinion, this is her best work till date, though I have immensely enjoyed her Braised Pork and Ghost Music as well.

All her works till now have been strongly rooted in surrealism and magical realism. This infuses an uncertainty or uniqueness in the plot as well as in the life of the protagonists, in An Yu's novels, which provides the impetus to the protagonist to steer through their existential crisis.

In Sunbirth, we meet two sisters—one runs a family apothecary and the other works at a massage centre. They live in a village called Five Poems Lake (what a beautiful name, right? There is a backstory for this nomenclature). It's not easy to leave this village. The sun is disappearing from their sky, one sliver at a time, at an uncertain speed and with it is receding the sustainability of life under this sky. This leads the novel towards traces of a dystopia as well, but only mildly so.

The author has more in store for her readers; the uncertainty in the lives of the sisters multiply as they tumble upon facts that hint at their father's involvement in the bizzare happenings of the town—which the readers will discover by and by.

What do we hold on to at the time of uncertainty? Hope for the future? Love? Family?

How is a family born?

Sunbirth will make a reader dwell on these questions.

For some readers, the ending may leave a bit wanting if their focus is more on the setting of the novel instead of on its emotional landscape. My take is that the speculative setting of this novel is not an end in itself but a means to navigate the emotional landscape of its characters and in that, the ending is perfect.

I am a huge fan of Haruki Murakami's works, and in An Yu's earlier works, I could see a lot of Murakami-esque elements; comparison with Murakami is almost inevitable when a novel embraces surrealism and/or magical realism. Of course, this didn't not take away anything from the richness or the originality of her books or talent, but I have always hoped that An Yu would ultimately create a niche unique to herself—because a very few can have such command on genres like surrealism and magical realism, and she's one of those few. Sunbirth seems like a firm step towards An Yu's own niche of literature.

With the end of Sunbirth, now I await her next novel.

Let me end this review with gratitude to publisher Grove Press and Net Galley for the happiness that came my way in the shape of the early and free copy of Sunbirth they made available in lieu of a honest review.

Q: Do I recommend Sunbirth to my fellow readers?
A: Yes! ❤️

thank you netgalley for the arc!

this book popped up in my reccomendations and the synopsis hooked me. i love books about family, especially sisters. i thought i had not heard of this author before but i looked up her other works and recognize the cover of ghost music.

sunbirth is such a gem to me, it ticked all my boxes. the writing strikes the perfect balance between precise and poetic. the characters are real, the dialogue is natural. and while the story is also deeply rooted in the real world, the unexplainable slowly starts to creep in. it's all so well set up by the author.

to me this is a horror book, the uncanny kind. it's the type of unsettling that makes you rethink your whole life.

the story starts with two sisters, they live in a small town called five poems lake. this town is surrounded by desert and isolated from the rest of the world. no one has ever heard back from those who have tried to leave.

life is harsh in five poems lake, since there's barely any sun. no one knows why but every year, the sun is slowly vanishing. it's constantly dark and bone-deep cold. the people who still live there are preparing for the day when the sun will no longer rise. it's been over a decade in the making.

just when this day seems to approach rapidly, people start witnessing a strange phenomenon. they call them beacons. a warm light first starts to shoot out of a person's mouth, and quickly engulfs the victim's entire head...

themes : climate change, family dynamics, existentialism (from sooooo many angles like what is love? is it dying for someone or living for someone? is home a place or is it a person? should we even look for meaning in life? what is the point of anything if we have no control over our lives? why keep going if the sun is going to die soon anyway?)

will be buying if/when it comes out as paperback

Sunbirth is an intense, complex and brilliant novel. The plot immediately draws you in, creating a setting that is both familiar yet strange - unheimlich - and infuses the fiction with a unique feeling of unease. The themes that permeate the narrative are poignant and important. The current climate crisis is mirrored in the novel, where ours is a world that is getting continuously hotter, theirs is a world that is getting colder, but the threat to our daily life that this envisions is all too realistic. The theme of sisterhood, family and death all intertwined, also makes for an interesting read and the An Yu’s musings on what happens after death and how we memorialised the dead are written with striking beauty. I would have like for Yu to have leant in to the idea of religious radicalism that is touched on throughout the novel, as an additional plot point. However, the plot still flows swiftly and ends with an uplifting feeling of hope and light, unveiling the darkness that is throughout the novel.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC.

I have been a huge fan of An Yu since I read Ghost Music, and I enjoyed Braised Pork as well. I was really excited to see she had a new book coming out.

I think the writing style of Sunbirth is exactly what I expected from An Yu, it has a good flow without being overly flowery. I found it very enjoyable to read.

In terms of plot, Sunbirth is very weird, and though it was fun, I honestly don't think I understand what it all meant yet. The first section is very slow paced, but I think it really picked up right before the first flashback to the dad's time.

Overall I was not disappointed!

I enjoyed this. The dry, sparing prose built a choking atmosphere and it's not for everyone but it is for me. I also might be the only one who enjoyed the first half more, since I found the second's pacing the tiniest bit off. All in all I can't believe I haven't read from this author before and I look forward to doing so.
Thank you to Grove and NetGalley for this ARC.

I really like An Yu's work so i was hyped to get this ARC and it really lived up to its potential. gorgeously literary, interesting characters, and intricate themes. 5 stars. tysm for thea rc.

A thoughtful journey into an imagined scenario. It built up to more thought provoking/existential questions towards the end that I am still sitting with. Does location or setting define who we are? How do people impact our identities? What is home? How do we bring contemporary life into harmony with traditional practices like tending our ancestral land? What is love? Versus duty or devotion? Does it matter whether we understand how something happens, or that we understand the truth of what happened versus living with the impact of history in our present day lives?

Despite the grief of disappeared parents and unanswered questions, the mood felt light and thoughtful, more melancholic. The kind of bittersweet nostalgia and offbeat tone akin to that of the film, I Saw the TV Glow, but with a possibly warmer finish?

It felt like living in what could be an apocalyptic moment, but you're not sure whether the world is ending, and doing your best to take things as they come.

Oh, wow.
This has got to be one of the strangest, weirdest books I have ever read.
From the start, I was hooked by the low-profile of the narrator and the strangeness of the story and her background. As a character, I found her and her sister to be so real and vivid, and the same goes to every other character that crosses paths with them through the story - from Miss Pan to Red Bean, the Su girl to her brother Big Su, the girls' father and grandfather, now dead... they all had their own voice and it was so real. The sisters' relationship, their mutual resentments, the things that they cling to, those they want to shed, the way they meet in the middle but in fact, don't, and how they've kept everything bottled up inside them until that moment when it becomes impossible to swallow it all back and then everything comes out and it's hurtful and painful and mean and oh, so real! For me, the main character of this story was indeed the sisters' relationship, their bonds and ties and what each one has sacrificed for the other without ever acknowledging it.
And then the sun, and its disappearance, and the consequences - it was the perfect background of chaos and whimsy (yes, whimsy) for the central act, in my opinion. Curious too, was the thing about the Beacons and what conclusions one might reach from those chapters where we follow the girls' father through his own investigation. In the end, we're left with more questions than answers, because that is the gist of this tale, isn't it? To make us think, to make us wonder, all wrapped up in one of the most realistic accounts of sisterly bonds.
I did love this book, and that ending was just perfect.

I loved this read. It gave me so many things to think about.

Is home a place or is it a person? Do you parts of you get left behind when you move somewhere else?

This book will not answer any the questions it raises. If that’s something that irritates you, you might want to skip this read.

I personally love this type of book because it makes me think deeply about things I probably rarely consider.

I liked the sister relationship in this because they are so different. It’s ok to want something different and to not be attached to places or things, but it’s also ok to want a mundane life with the familiarity of everything and everyone you know in it. Trying to exist alongside someone who wants the opposite things to you is an interesting dynamic.

Watching the sun disappear and accepting the inevitability of the end drawing nigh was a strong theme throughout, while still giving room for character development.

I will think about Miss Pan a lot.

I really enjoyed this book, although it's one of those challenging literary novels that would take the right reader to appreciate it. The young female unnamed narrator lives with her sister, Dong Ji, in the small town of Five Poems Lake, a place where no one can ever seem to leave. The narrator lives a quiet, small life as a pharmacist. Her father, a policeman who cared too much to be good at his job, killed himself a decade ago, under strange circumstances.

The sun is disappearing sliver by sliver until it vanishes completely and people's heads start turning into blazes of light as they walk around like zombies. They are called Beacons. The story vascillates between the eco climate weirdness of dystopian life under permanent darkness and all the strange ways that humans react to that. Then it delves deep into the complicated relationship between the sisters who each struggle to deal with parents who have abandoned them and how to live the life they choose as an adult when their childhood was stolen from them.

The prose isn't poetic, but it's simple and spare in a way that tugs at you and satisfyingly builds dread. This is a character rather than plot driven story in which not much happens and the characters often don't seem to have much agency.

But I was captivated and this book made me want to check out An Yu's back catalog. She has an intriguing perspective and a weird fiction style in the vein of Melissa Broder.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Thanks to the Publisher and NetGalley for the eARC.

In the small town of Five Poems Lake that nobody seems to be able to leave, the sun has been disappearing slowly for years. And now, as the sun is about to vanish completely, people’s heads all over town turn into miniature suns, leaving the human underneath some kind of mindless zombie. A young pharmacist and her sister have to figure out what to do and what their late father might have had to do with what is happening now.

What an interesting book! Where do I even begin? The story started out very slow, this was somehow helped by the very straight forward, almost plain but very deliberate writing style. Which also really fit the unnamed MC, in whose POV most of the story is told . It only picked up at around 40% when we were introduced to the girl’s father and what happened before he passed and what that might have had to do with what is happening in the story’s present. Then things started to happen in quick succession before we slow down for the last few pages and slightly abrupt, weirdly but delightfully hopeful end…
At no point while reading this did I have any idea what could be happening next, at no point did I feel like I knew this story and the characters. It was a ride! Very unique story with heavy themes of grief, sibling bonds, the connection of guilt and a sense of duty, environmentalism, home and identity… All well done, I thought, and with fresh thoughts on them.
I have to say, the sisters that raised each other, same same but different, and were not able to let each other go hit way too close to home for me.

I might not be sure what it all meant, what really was going on, but I enjoyed this book a lot. I loved the writing style, the subtle but effective world building and the human connections. There was no character I didn’t like and root for or whose motivations I did not understand. In a story where nothing is as expected, this is quite an accomplishment.
I might come back to this and edit after some more thought. Thought is needed.

Every day, a little sliver of the sun disappears. People are struggling financially.
As the lake freezes over the people in the village realize they just can’t survive…..
…..But when the Beacons appear, they bring hope.
They are ordinary people with heads replaced with searing, blinding light, like miniature suns.

“Sunbirth” is not your ‘run-of-the-mill’ fiction novel.
Ha!
I mean 👀LOOK 👀at that book cover!!! 🌝
It’s best experienced! There is the exquisite dreamlike consciousness ….hallucinatory or illusory feelings ….and yep > it’s a little bizarre…..
[….in an engaging-intriguing-eccentric-outlandish-BREAKING DOWN…..provocative-mournful-affecting-ENJOYABLE-READING-way].

Describing “Sunbirth” feels like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. If you have read *An Yu’s* prior two books, “Braised Pork” and “Ghost Music”, you might understand what I mean.
This is one of those times where each reader will add their own spin to it. We each might have similar experiences to this novel ….yet our introspective internal thoughts, feelings, and questions might vary tremendously.
One of An Yu’s gifts is allowing & creating us (the reader) to access our own thoughts about the characters motivations and choices made.
For example ….jumping right in ….
….there is one character in this village, Miss Pan, who is much more privileged (wealthy) - than most. There is a very dramatic scene (not seen or even felt — other than shock from the news)…. but I’m ’still thinking about WHY…..why did she do what she did? And what do other readers think? (great book club -discussion pick).
This novel has me wondering my own reaction (a second reading) ….at the end of Trump’s second term. As in ….”I’m nervous”!
While the sun was disappearing— little by little in “Sunbirth”— do you think I ‘didn’t’ ‘associate-with-apprehension’ the craziness….chaos….and mountains of concerns we are facing today? I did believe me.

At the same time — I could remove myself from our current events and simply lose myself inside An Yu’s world.
Ha….and speaking of our “world” 🌎…. the fragility of it …. [see, there I go again thinking our our current issues today]…..
…..rapid climate change, interconnected global economies, and societies, rising geopolitical tensions, potential for large-scale disruptions like pandemics, and the significant impact humans have on the environment…..
I have never felt more vulnerable - or aware - to be a part of the our declining collapse world, than I am today.

More about “Sunbirth” itself:
….The characters in this small village have their share of disarray …. topsy-turviness-confusion.
and questions … lots of questions.
They are facing a desperate future with little help.
Five Poems Lake had been in decay long before the sun began to disappear. It used to be a hot humid place surrounded by endless desert.

The story orbits around two sisters. The older sister, Dong Ji, works at a wellness parlor. (noting that not many in the village can afford the costs).
The younger sister (the narrator)….has no given name. I would’ve preferred her to have a name — but its my own neurotic comfort
pet peeve.
Our story works just fine with the younger sister not having a name, but I’m curious as to why not?/!?
However, our youngest nameless sister who owns a pharmacy, is a compassionate-likable character. Both sisters are likable ….giving the bleakness of all that is happening around them some lightness-love-feelings.
We get stories about customers who come into the pharmacy ….others in the community….back stories about the sisters father, grandfather, and separate mothers. We get stories about the police (the sister‘s father had been a policeman).
And while little sun-heads are popping up light around town …. we are also given stories about family loss, death and grief ….
During the week after Ba’s death, (the sisters father), “there would be extended moments in the day when nobody talked. We didn’t know what to say”.
“Grief is a running tap, a closed cabinet, chopsticks, touching bowls, teeth, chewing. I’d never imagined that would be the case. I hadn’t expected it to slip into everything”.
Their grandfather quietly accepted his son‘s death.

The local weatherman was interesting…..
He always matched his tie to the season.
Spring was green, summer was orange, autumn was red, and winter was blue.
“Today, a dark orange tie with white stripes was nodded nearly around his neck. I wonder whether the color choice was made out of optimism or denial”. I wondered too.

Sunbirth" is a word that essentially means "the birth of the sun" - signifying a new beginning, often associated with a radiant or powerful emergence, similar to how the sun rises in the morning; it can also be used metaphorically to represent a significant moment of renewal or awakening in someone's life. 

An Yu sure gave us chilly and chiller days ….
At only 256 pages long — it’s packed filled with cinematic images.
In some ways, An Yu is like a surgeon….cutting into the questions and mysteries of life with psychological acuity.

I loved it.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC of this book! I simply adored it; the writing and the magical realism of the world itself. In a way, it reminded me of Murakami’s work, just light and ethereal in such a way that makes you consider the world around you.

I will say, the book’s strong suit comes from its world. There is mystery to it, a realism aspect that puts it here, but not at the same time. I think it definitely could have done away with some of the scenes, some were drawn out and there were a few plot lines that had me confused. However, if you’re a fan of this type of literature the same way I am, it is a beautiful read.

Each of An Yu's novels has drifted further from mundane reality than the last, with the magical realism elements of Braised Pork becoming more prominent in Ghost Music and her newest novel, Sunbirth, dipping into the sort of territory of apocalyptic speculative fiction. It feels almost akin to Junji Ito's Uzumaki in its strange, absurdist approach to the end of the world. The concept on its face is intriguing: The sun is slowly disappearing, one sliver at a time, leading the desert village of Five Poems Lake to become colder and colder. Stranger yet, people's heads begin turning into little suns of their own, an affliction that seems to spread like a disease, turning hundreds into light-emitting zombies of sorts.

As she tends to do, An Yu describes these surreal phenomena with utterly straightforward prose that leaves the imagery and storytelling bare. She manages to find resonance in this sparse style, building a plot trajectory that escalates and escalates before reaching its inevitable conclusion. Even with the more explicitly speculative setting, this follows a similar path to An Yu's other novels in that there's an impressively gradual build-up of magical realism elements, starting with a mundane protagonist in a mundane situation before becoming so much more. The relationship between two sisters that serves as the core of this novel is often spelled out overly explicitly, but the ideas at hand are very affecting and it intertwines with the fantastical plot in interesting ways. I suspect I still would have to consider An Yu's debut her best novel (its gentler touch of magical realism just appeals to me), but she continues to be an incredibly intriguing new author that I will always be first in line to read.

For a book called Five Poems Lake you expect there to be some poetic writing, but it was so dry and mundane. The magical realism is so minimal, the characters had a little development, but not enough to keep me invested. I’m basically the most disappointed by the writing; it was a torture reading this. Endless conversations, dull and meaningless. I guess it’s a ME problem, I just don’t like that type of writing; the plot moves very slowly with a lot of fillers. I love a dystopian story, but just didn’t vibe with that one.
Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic | Grove Press for providing me with the ARC.

this was a pretty good book, it did feel like it had too much happening at once, and not everything was really addressed. Some things were just kind of disregarded. Other than that the book was good

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

Really enjoyed the characters and the plot however did not really hold me in. Had a hard time turning the pages, perhaps coming from a lack of personal interest or engagement. Nonetheless a really interesting book that I objectively find well crafted and thoughtful by the futuristic point of view so would recommend and talk about it.