Name: PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING.
Rating: 4.052631578947368 (19 reviews)
ISBN: 9781472277541

MELISSA. FU

PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING.

kristie alexis

Lindsay

To know a story is to stroke the silken surfaces of loss, to feel the weight of beauty in his hands. 

To know a story is to carry it always, etched in his bones, even if dormant for decades.

To tell a story, he realises, is to plant a seed and let it grow.

‘Remember that to have an orchard is to honour the generations that came before and will come after.’

She cannot promise them external safety, but she can help them create their own internal reserves of beauty.

She was frightened, but she was also determined. These two feelings always go hand in hand.’

Her independence has been too hard won to relinquish to some man.

Maybe, Meilin thinks, it’s that you have to carry your regrets until you’ve made peace with them. Only then can you lay them down.

‘We can forgive without understanding. Sometimes we must. Maybe that’s what forgiveness is – accepting someone’s actions, even if there are no good explanations.’

Melissa Fu

A moving debut novel about war, migration, and the power of telling stories, Peach Blossom Spring follows three generations of a Chinese family on their search for a place to call home. With every misfortune there is a blessing and within every blessing, the seeds of misfortune, and so it goes, until the end of time. It is 1938 in China and, as a young wife, Meilin's future is bright. But with the Japanese army approaching, Meilin and her four year old son, Renshu, are forced to flee their home. Relying on little but their wits and a beautifully illustrated hand scroll, filled with ancient fables that offer solace and wisdom, they must travel through a ravaged country, seeking refuge. Years later, Renshu has settled in America as Henry Dao. Though his daughter is desperate to understand her heritage, he refuses to talk about his childhood. How can he keep his family safe in this new land when the weight of his history threatens to drag them down? Yet how can Lily learn who she is if she can never know her family's story? Spanning continents and generations, Peach Blossom Spring is a bold and moving look at the history of modern China, told through the story of one family. It's about the power of our past, the hope for a better future, and the haunting question: What would it mean to finally be home?

Peach Blossom Spring

I am absolutely stunned by how gripping I found this novel. At places, it was a little cheesy but it was ultimately a very touching exploration of the themes of home and belonging and identity during turbulent times and in the face of displacement and violence. I liked how the motives of language and storytelling as a means of cultural belonging were woven throughout the novel and tied it strongly together. If I had one criticism, it would be that the stakes between the years between 1938 and the 80s and once the action moved into the 90s and firmly in the US, felt quite uneven, though they did well in illustrating the variety of threats and pressures applied to Meilin and Renshu / Henry.

Vivian

I was skeptical at first but Peach Blossom Spring 桃花源 turns out to be a beautiful and moving novel, that I teared up a bit at the end. I always assumed that first-gen immigrants chose not to pass down their culture heritage out of a desire to assimilate, this novel made me realize that maybe they just wanted to leave the past in the past, because memories of war time were too painful. They didn't know how to be Chinese and American at the same time, so they stopped being Chinese. I was also very enlightened by the Taiwanese perspective, one side of the history that I haven't seen before. 

I really empathized with the character Renshu / Henry, he was caught in a double bind. Was it right to abandon his past and forge a new life in America? Would he have a happier life had he gone back and lived with his Ma? Life would have been imperfect either way, a blessing and a curse. And his Ma - Meilin - reminds me of Pachinko, just like all these perseverant women of their generation, "a woman's lot is to suffer".

Seher Mohsin

We can forgive without understanding. Sometimes we must.  Maybe that’s what forgiveness is – accepting someone’s actions, even if there are no good explanations.’


I’m always astounded when I’m on tour for a book that shouldn’t need any promotion. This is the sort of book I’d buy for my grandmother (she DNFs things like crazy).

Peach Blossom Spring spans three generations as they’re impacted by war and need to constantly move. The book revolves around loss, but also hope, because no matter what you decide, “it will be both a blessing and a curse”. We have Meilin who takes her son and travels all over China, eventually settling in Taiwan to raise her son Renshu. Renshu wins a scholarship to the US, where he settles down as Henry and raises his daughter Lily.

It’s jarring sometimes, to think of how Meilins life started out and where she had to go, and how she had to do it. You know the dangers that surround her, but Melissa Fu, relied more on us knowing rather than needing to spell everything out which worked really well. While the bulk of the book focuses on Meilin and Henry, the rest that shows how Henry settles in America feels more rushed than the rest; which is good because that is how life happens at some point everything is a fight and then things settle. You also see Henry/Renshu’s paranoia kick in when it comes to Lily trying to learn more about her heritage; he’s just so scared after what happened in the war and in the early years of his moving to the states. Eventually, he too learns how to plant an orchard (not just a literal one), but by giving Lily the stories that he heard and the journeys he had to make.

Danika Hayden

Slow start, but enjoyable read overall. Loved how the story was seen from the perspective of multiple individuals throughout the book. 

PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING.

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