Name: p.'s review of Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu
Item: Peach Blossom Spring
Rating: 4.5
Author: p.

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

Lindsay

‘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.’

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.

In China, as long as they kept moving, they were surviving. As long as they were surviving, they didn’t have to think about what they had left behind. It’s the looking back that terrifies him.

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

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

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

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

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.

kristie alexis

Catherine Duplessis

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.

jess

Kristen Claiborn

I work part-time at a fast-food restaurant. It pays surprisingly well, is insanely laid-back, and a pretty fun place to work. And after having worked there for a while now, I realize how difficult it really is, and I wish the entire world could experience this type of job at least once. There is a young man I work with who has more energy than an entire toddler room at a preschool. This kid never stops. He’s enthusiastic about everything. He drives most of the other employees absolutely bonkers, but I feel like my previous life has allowed me to see him in a different light. One day at work he just wouldn’t leave me alone…he was almost literally up my nose the entire day. It happened to be the day the Book of the Month books dropped, and I was having a hard time picking a third choice. So, I shoved my phone at him and made him pick my third book…and this is the book he decided on. Props to the kid, he picked a good one. 
	I struggled with the five stars, largely because I struggled with the beginning of this book. I know very little about China or Taiwan, so it was hard to visualize anything from the first half of this book. The landscapes, architecture, people, etc, were difficult to picture in my head. However, Fu’s writing was spectacular. She painted pictures with words. I did find myself becoming increasingly frustrated with Meilin’s character, refusing help from Longwei over and over and over. I wanted to smack her upside the head a few times (I only feel that way towards fictional characters), hoping to infuse some sense into her head. Alas, she never gave in (I hope that isn’t too much of a spoiler!). She managed to forge a life entirely on her own…mad respect. 
	When “Henry” gets to the US, and then eventually to Los Alamos, I did a happy dance…and told everybody I know that this book ends up in New Mexico. Despite NM being the fifth largest state in the US based on land size, the population struggles to hang out around 2 million, making it one of the smallest based on population. Those of us that are from, or just love, New Mexico, get unnecessarily excited when New Mexico pops up ANYWHERE. Both of my parents graduated from Los Alamos High School, and I grew up in Albuquerque…I love New Mexico. I’m pretty sure I should run their tourism department. It was sooooooooooooo easy for me to visualize the story once Henry to Los Alamos, and the story just flowed beautifully. Having grown up in NM, which is a cornucopia of different people, I have been acquainted with many people who insisted their children were Americans…and that’s it. Other cultures and nationalities were brushed under a rug. Teaching children other languages was a hard no…and I always wondered why. This book is a good example of why. Fu was able to write a tale that helped me understand why language is so important to so many people. 
	This book is an exceptional piece of fiction. I truly enjoyed it.

Lillian

Thank you to Netgalley and Little, Brown and Company for providing me with an e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest feedback!

cws/tws: war, loss of a loved one, sexual assault, colonialism, racism, slurs

As much as I proclaim to love expansive, intergenerational sagas, I sure read very few of them. However, this particular title caught my eye while browsing Netgalley, and oh am I ever so glad that it did! After many, many, tears, and just as many smiles, I am sitting down to give a glowing review of this book.

There were several things that caught my eye at first sight, with this book. The first of them was that the cover is absolutely gorgeous — both the US and UK, which in my experience, is not as common as it should be. The second thing was how visceral the synopsis appeared to be. Peach Blossom Spring follows three generations of a Chinese family, through the second Sino-Japanese War just before the turn of the millenia. Shui Meilin, the resilient and pragmatic widow, takes her only son Dao Renshu from Chongqing, to Changsha, to Shanghai, and Taiwan. Years later, Dao Renshu, now going by Henry Dao, is living in the US with a white wife and their daughter Lily, who is desperate to reconnect with the stories that Henry refuses to tell, believing them too painful.

So, first of all, Peach Blossom Spring is probably not a fun, beach read. There are funny parts, to be sure, but ultimately, this story is gut wrenching and I’d take a good look at the triggers. However, the way that the book deals with serious topics such as colonialism, war, and sexual assault, are done very respectfully and carefully. None of it felt gratuitous. Unfortunately, these were real events that happened. The 20th century was wildly tumultuous and traumatic for Chinese people. The pain that appears in this book is guttural at every turn, but ultimately, there is an underlying message of hope, through the Peach Blossom Spring, that ties it together. 

I feel like the line between a great sad book, and a book that exists just to be sad, is the catharsis you get from reading it. If a book is just a string of sad events with no release, you feel like you didn’t read it for any particular reason, or that you didn’t get anything from it. Peach Blossom Spring doesn’t feel that way. The string that connects all of the events and years together is this desire to find a place to call home — and a gradual acceptance that you can make your own home. It’s upsetting, it’s regretful, but in the end, it’s not bleak.

Another thing I really enjoyed about this book was that although the scope was large, it felt intimate, and small, in a good way. You really feel like you’re getting close to one particular family through the span of many decades. The characters are deeply flawed, but you’re rooting for them nonetheless. You want them to find their home, wherever they are. I particularly loved reading about Meilin. She’s an incredibly strong matriarch who wants the best for her son, and is simply trying to survive. Henry, or Renshu, on the other hand, is a wildly complicated man, whose trauma can render him aloof at times, or even cold. His relationship with his daughter Lily, however tumultuous, was beautifully written, and I think many diaspora kids can relate.

The historical and linguistic details included, as well, were much appreciated. When telling a story about events as formative as the second Sino-Japanese War, the Chinese Civil War, and the White Terror in Taiwan, I feel like it’s important to do so respectfully, and in a well-researched way. I am no historian, but I would wager that Melissa Fu accomplished this goal.

This book was a love letter to Chinese people, our diaspora, and everyone who is looking for a home. I hope that you will pick this book up and that you, too, will find your Peach Blossom Spring.

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".

MELISSA. FU

PEACH BLOSSOM SPRING.

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. 

Catherine Duplessis &
Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu

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