Our Missing Hearts A Novel

Celeste Ng — 2022

From the number one bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, a deeply suspenseful and heartrending novel about the unbreakable love between a mother and child in a society consumed by fear Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in Harvard University's library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve "American culture" in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic--including the work of Bird's mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old. Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn't know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn't wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change. Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It's a story about the power--and limitations--of art to create change, the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact.

Reviews

MK@easyfriday

Oct 5, 2024

Gripping. Kept me at the edge of my pants. All to easy to imagine in real life. Half a star off for a somewhat abrupt and unsatisfying end.

Roberta@robysbujo

Dec 31, 2023

I really wanted to love this book. I loved “Little Fires Everywhere” because the characters were so multi-layered and they felt so real, so I thought I’d love this book as well, instead I was left disappointed.

The general idea of “Our Missing Hearts” is great and I think this book could have gone to so many places, but it never did. I kept hoping it would go somewhere, but it felt very flat.

The story is divided in three parts. Part one is Bird’s perspective and I found it quite interesting and intriguing. I wanted to know more and I was getting excited about the book. Part two is Margaret’s perspective and that’s the section that felt really flat to me. We get flashbacks to how everything started and it could have been so deep, given what the story is about, but somehow it just felt superficial. Overall Margaret could have been so layered and had the potential to be one of the best characters I’ve encountered in a while, but ended up feeling very one-dimensional to me.

Part three is very rushed and left me with a bittersweet feeling. I wish this book could have made me feel way more than this.

Eli Alvah Huckabee@elijah

Dec 13, 2023

There was a lot I wanted to enjoy about this book:

Celeste Ng and I both hate quotation marks
Main characters were either kids, linguists, librarians, or poets
It’s 21st century literature (which is obviously the only acceptable kind of literature)
the whole book read like one, long rainy day

But characters fell flat, especially Bird. He was this empty vessel that was moved from place to place. Wish we saw more of him and not just the world according to his parents.

Margaret was what really killed me, though. Without going too far into spoiling her character, she clearly did not want to be a mom anymore! Her last decision was incredibly selfish and could only be done by someone who had given up on her children. If that’s what it takes to be a poet, I DO NOT have what it takes.

Zach Otte@zotte

Apr 4, 2024

Laura Gill@gillybookworm

Oct 22, 2023