Dear Chrysanthemums: A Novel in Stories

by Fiona Sze-Lorrain

Overview

Longlisted for the 2024 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, a startling and vivid debut novel in stories from acclaimed poet and translator Fiona Sze-Lorrain, featuring deeply compelling Asian women who reckon with the past, violence, and exile—set in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Paris, and New York.

Composed of several interconnected stories, each taking place in a year ending with the number six, ironically a number that in Chinese divination signifies “a smooth life,” Dear Chrysanthemums is a novel about the scourge of inhumanity, survival, and past trauma that never leaves. The women in these stories are cooks, musicians, dancers, protestors, mothers and daughters, friends and enemies, all inexplicably connected in one way or another.

“Cooking for Madame Chiang,” 1946: Two cooks work for Madame Chiang Kai-shek and prepare a foreign dish craved by their mistress, which becomes a political weapon and leads to their tragic end.

“Death at the Wukang Mansion,” 1966: Punished for her extramarital affair, a dancer is transferred to Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution and assigned to an ominous apartment in a building whose other residents often depart in coffins.

“The White Piano,” 1966: A budding pianist from New York City settles down in Paris and is assaulted when a mysterious piano arrives from Singapore.

“The Invisible Window,” 2016: After their exile following the Tiananmen Square massacre, three women gather in a French cathedral to renew their friendship and reunite in their grief and faith.

With devastating precision, a masterly ear for language, and a profound understanding of both human cruelty and compassion, Fiona Sze-Lorrain weaves Dear Chrysanthemums, an evocative and disturbing portrait of diasporic life, the shared story of uprooting, resilience, artistic expression, and enduring love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668012987
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	05/02/2023
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	1,022,732
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a fiction writer, poet, musician, translator, and editor. She writes and translates in English, French, and Chinese. She is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Rain in Plural (Princeton, 2020) and The Ruined Elegance (Princeton, 2016), and fifteen books of translation. A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Best Translated Book Award among other honors, she was a 2019–20 Abigail R. Cohen Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination and the inaugural writer-in-residence at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires. She lives in Paris and has performed worldwide as a zheng harpist.

Editorial Reviews

03/20/2023

In Sze-Lorrain’s graceful debut collection, women negotiate the violence of pivotal events in Chinese history. “Death at the Wukang Mansion” takes place in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution, when an accomplished ballerina is banished to a mansion and watches the same coffin entering and leaving the building with a different body each day. In “Cooking for Madame Chiang,” a former servant of Madame Chiang Kai-shek works in the nationalist leader’s household in 1946. Sze-Lorrain picks up with the narrator years later, in “Green,” dealing with the suspicion for her role in “the old aristocratic society.” In “The Invisible Window,” set in 2016, three Chinese women meet in a Paris cathedral to reminisce about their involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, while the title story traces the rise and fall of a famous guzheng player during Mao Zedong’s reign. Sze-Lorrain effortlessly evokes the spirit of each setting, be it the ardent fervor of nationalism during the Chinese Civil War or the seedy glamor of a dive bar in Paris, and she imbues her characters with haunting melancholy as victims “doomed to the mishaps of verity and the equally hurtful edges of fiction.” This author is one to watch. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Dear Chrysanthemums

"In nimble, evocative prose, these stories follow Chinese women from 1946 to 2016 as they brave moments of personal and national turmoil." —New York Times Book Review

“A haunting debut... At once brutal and tender, this novel of women’s lives has the power to move and complicate our understanding of the long shadow cast by revolution as well as the inextinguishable longing every person has for beauty, love, art, and selfhood.” —Asymptote

"Dear Chrysanthemums may be short at just 160 pages, but the unique structure of connecting the stories through the many decades of modern Chinese history and some of the same characters gives it the feel of a longer novel." —Asian Review of Books

“Attention to detail, especially with respect to numbers and music, is part of what makes the novel a joy to read... Sze-Lorrain pushes the boundaries of the Asian American novel into a global conversation... Dreamy and haunting...” —Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism

"Sze-Lorrain is to be praised for her ornate, intimate stories. Sze-Lorrain has a gift for capturing distinctive voices, and this shines through in all of her characters." —No Man is an Island

"Provocative... In Dear Chrysanthemums, women try to free their bodies to be instruments of life as much as death, of self-expression as much as silence..." —Mekong Review

"In a novel that centers around the theme of erasure, the ‘white space’ between the lines, what is left unsaid or just alluded to, is where you’ll find the true story." —Reading Chinese Network Reviews

“Sze-Lorrain does not only shed light on the losses but also on the hypocritical nature of communist regimes. Perspectives on modern Chinese history like these are rare — and for a reason. A recommended read to those who wonder, but do not seek answers.” —Mochi Magazine

“Inventive and powerful... [a] stunning novel...” —Soapberry Review

“Elegant... Sze-Lorrain's lyrical writing suggests that rebellion, even if it has tragic consequences in the present, might bear fruit in the future through artistic expression.” —Shelf Awareness

“With shattering clarity, Sze-Lorrain teases apart the layers of complicity and survival that create a web of secrets, casting doubt on ever knowing the full truth behind each person’s story.” —Booklist

“Graceful... Sze-Lorrain effortlessly evokes the spirit of each setting, be it the ardent fervor of nationalism during the Chinese Civil War or the seedy glamor of a dive bar in Paris, and she imbues her characters with haunting melancholy as victims ‘doomed to the mishaps of verity and the equally hurtful edges of fiction.’ This author is one to watch.” —Publishers Weekly

"Sze-Lorrain excels in the lyrical mode as her attention to sensory observation illustrates how seemingly minor details such as the play of light from a shattered stained-glass window or the geometrically interlocking joints in a table can become microcosmic worlds if one knows how to look. Weaving these details together with an orchestral sensibility, the novel serves as a multilayered meditation on intergenerational trauma, memory, and resilience... By turns delicate and wild, this novel will linger like a chrysanthemum’s fragrance long after the last page." —Kirkus

“In Dear Chrysanthemums, Fiona Sze-Lorrain collects the shards of modern Chinese history and builds a prismatic, gorgeously intimate story of women who face impossible choices and losses in order to survive. Unflinching and haunting, the novel is a vivid portrayal of disillusionment and exile. Step by step, Sze-Lorrain constructs an intricate and deeply moving web that will leave you stunned by the end.” —Tsering Yangzom Lama, author of We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies, shortlisted for the 2022 Giller Prize

“How can a book be simultaneously so beautiful and so heartbreaking? Dear Chrysanthemums explores the repercussions of the major events of modern Chinese history—the Chinese civil war, the Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen Square massacre—as they echo throughout lives in the diaspora. Sze-Lorrain’s storytelling is graceful yet fierce—this is an important novel about histories that have changed the world.”
—Shawna Yang Ryan, author of Green Island and Water Ghosts

"Dear Chrysanthemums weaves together the stories of Asian women whose lives are shaped, with and without their knowledge, by the storm of history and cultural upheaval. The political is always personal in this remarkable debut, in which the practice of art—dance, music, writing, even the art of cooking—is opposed to oppression, violence, loneliness, displacement, and death. With uncompromising detail, in language that is at once precise and evocative, author Sze-Lorrain takes us inside the individual struggles of her characters to reveal fascinating patterns of connection and hidden truth."
—Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The World of Pondside and The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia

"I read this book with my heart in my throat. Taken one by one, each of these delectable stories offers an intimate, sensuous portrait of the life of otherwise mysterious girls and women, their desires and obsessions and griefs. Taken as a whole, the novel is a heady, energetic, global mosaic that conveys just how deeply one human soul can relate to another."
—Susanna Daniel, author of Sea Creatures and Stiltsville

"Just beneath the precisely-rendered quotidian world of these linked narratives lies a fathomless well of menace. Given this, Sze-Lorrain seems to ask, what are life’s chances?"
—Frederick Turner, author of The Go-Between: A Novel of the Kennedy Years and 1929: A Novel of the Jazz Age

"Exquisite... Dear Chrysanthemums achieves the aesthetic ambitions of a novel with lyrical prose and imagery. Sze-Lorrain probes into our complex, volatile society, expressing her thought and lucidity."
—Ma Jian, author of China Dream, The Dark Road, and Beijing Coma

From the Publisher

2023-02-25
This novel in stories illuminates Asian women’s resilience across decades of personal, political, and economic upheaval.

“Chrysanthemums bloom early in the autumn,” the narrator remarks. “Noble flowers in Japan, they flourish under short days and long nights. Their petals bear a resemblance to the sun’s rays.” Taking place during years ending with six, “a divine number...[which] means a smooth life, a perfect path,” the book tells a series of intimate stories spanning the years 1946 to 2016, taking place in Paris, New York, Shanghai, Singapore, and Beijing. Among Sze-Lorrain’s exquisitely rendered characters are Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s personal cook; a former dancer who, during the Cultural Revolution, must live in a Shanghai apartment building where she witnesses her neighbors routinely depart in coffins; and a Juilliard-trained pianist who is plunged into encounters with her past when, in 1996, a piano is mysteriously delivered to her new apartment in Paris. The women’s stories weave together in understated and inventive ways, much like a recurring motif in a musical composition, which comes as no surprise given the author's background as a poet and zheng harpist. Sze-Lorrain excels in the lyrical mode as her attention to sensory observation illustrates how seemingly minor details such as the play of light from a shattered stained-glass window or the geometrically interlocking joints in a table can become microcosmic worlds if one knows how to look. Weaving these details together with an orchestral sensibility, the novel serves as a multilayered meditation on intergenerational trauma, memory, and resilience. Although this novel feels complete, one has the sense that Sze-Lorrain has many more stories to tell.

By turns delicate and wild, this novel will linger like a chrysanthemum’s fragrance long after the last page.

Kirkus Reviews

Catherine Ho delivers a dynamic performance of this haunting collection of short stories that take place between 1946 and 2016 during the years that end in six, a sacred number in Chinese divination. Ho channels resilient women through tumultuous and traumatic times in Chinese history. Evoking a strong sense of place through rich details and lyrical writing, Ho brings well-developed characters to life. These include a former dancer during the Cultural Revolution, as well as three women who were exiled following the Tiananmen Square massacre. Spanning seven decades in Beijing, New York, Paris, Shanghai, and Singapore, Ho nimbly inhabits a diverse diaspora. While historical background details are spare, Ho's versatile performance elevates this luminous debut. V.T.M. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

June 2023 - AudioFile