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Our Missing Hearts
Cover of Our Missing Hearts
Our Missing Hearts
Reese's Book Club (A Novel)
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An instant New York Times bestseller • A New York Times Notable Book • Named a Best Book of 2022 by People, TIME Magazine, The Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, Los Angeles Times, and Oprah Daily, and more • A Reese's Book Club Pick • New York Times Paperback Row Selection
From the #1 bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, comes the inspiring new novel about a mother’s unshakeable love.
 
“Riveting, tender, and timely.” —People, Book of the Week
"Remarkable . . . An unflinching yet life-affirming drama about the power of art and love to push back in dangerous times." —Oprah Daily
“Thought-provoking, heart-wrenching . . . I was so invested in the future of this mother and son.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick)

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old. He doesn’t know what happened to her—only that her books have been banned—and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him. 
Then one day, Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, and soon he is pulled 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 heroic librarians, and finally to New York City, where he will finally learn the truth about what happened to his mother, and what the future holds for them both.
Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It’s about the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and the power of art to create change.
An instant New York Times bestseller • A New York Times Notable Book • Named a Best Book of 2022 by People, TIME Magazine, The Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, Los Angeles Times, and Oprah Daily, and more • A Reese's Book Club Pick • New York Times Paperback Row Selection
From the #1 bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, comes the inspiring new novel about a mother’s unshakeable love.
 
“Riveting, tender, and timely.” —People, Book of the Week
"Remarkable . . . An unflinching yet life-affirming drama about the power of art and love to push back in dangerous times." —Oprah Daily
“Thought-provoking, heart-wrenching . . . I was so invested in the future of this mother and son.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick)

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old. He doesn’t know what happened to her—only that her books have been banned—and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him. 
Then one day, Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, and soon he is pulled 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 heroic librarians, and finally to New York City, where he will finally learn the truth about what happened to his mother, and what the future holds for them both.
Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It’s about the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and the power of art to create change.
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Excerpts-
  • From the cover The letter arrives on a Friday. Slit and resealed with a sticker, of course, as all their letters are: Inspected for your safety-PACT. It had caused confusion at the post office, the clerk unfolding the paper inside, studying it, passing it up to his supervisor, then the boss. But eventually it had been deemed harmless and sent on its way. No return address, only a New York, NY postmark, six days old. On the outside, his name-Bird-and because of this he knows it is from his mother.

    He has not been Bird for a long time.

    We named you Noah after your father's father, his mother told him once. Bird was all your own doing.

    The word that, when he said it, felt like him. Something that did not belong on earth, a small quick thing. An inquisitive chirp, a self that curled up at the edges.

    The school hadn't liked it. Bird is not a name, they'd said, his name is Noah. His kindergarten teacher, fuming: He won't answer when I call him. He only answers to Bird.

    Because his name is Bird, his mother said. He answers to Bird, so I suggest you call him that, birth certificate be damned. She'd taken a Sharpie to every handout that came home, crossing off Noah, writing Bird on the dotted line instead.

    That was his mother: formidable and ferocious when her child was in need.

    In the end the school conceded, though after that the teacher had written Bird in quotation marks, like a gangster's nickname. Dear "Bird," please remember to have your mother sign your permission slip. Dear Mr. and Mrs. Gardner, "Bird" is respectful and studious but needs to participate more fully in class. It wasn't until he was nine, after his mother left, that he became Noah.

    His father says it's for the best, and won't let anyone call him Bird anymore.

    If anyone calls you that, he says, you correct them. You say: Sorry, no, that's not my name.

    It was one of the many changes that took place after his mother left. A new apartment, a new school, a new job for his father. An entirely new life. As if his father had wanted to transform them completely, so that if his mother ever came back, she wouldn't even know how to find them.

    He'd passed his old kindergarten teacher on the street last year, on his way home. Well, hello, Noah, she said, how are you this morning? and he could not tell whether it was smugness or pity in her voice.

    He is twelve now; he has been Noah for three years, but Noah still feels like one of those Halloween masks, something rubbery and awkward he doesn't quite know how to wear.

    So now, out of the blue: a letter from his mother. It looks like her handwriting-and no one else would call him that. Bird. After all these years he forgets her voice sometimes; when he tries to summon it, it slips away like a shadow dissolving in the dark.

    He opens the envelope with trembling hands. Three years without a single word, but finally he'll understand. Why she left. Where she's been.

    But inside: nothing but a drawing. A whole sheet of paper, covered edge to edge in drawings no bigger than a dime: cats. Big cats, little cats, striped and calico and tuxedo, sitting pert, licking their paws, lolling in puddles of sunlight. Doodles really, like the ones his mother drew on his lunch bags many years ago, like the ones he sometimes draws in his class notebooks today. Barely more than a few curved lines, but recognizable. Alive. That's all-no message, no words even, just cat after cat in ballpoint squiggle. Something about it tugs at the back of his mind, but he can't quite hook it.

    He turns the paper over, looking for clues, but the back of the page...
About the Author-
  • Celeste Ng is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere. Her third novel, Our Missing Hearts, will be published in October 2022. Ng is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and her work has been published in over thirty languages.
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    Starred review from August 1, 2022
    Ng’s remarkable dystopian latest (after Little Fires Everywhere) depicts draconian family separation tactics and a normalizing of violence against Asians and Asian Americans in an alternate present. In the wake of the nativist PACT act (Preserving American and Culture Traditions), a piece of legislation that opposes foreign cultural influences, the U.S. government begins reassigning custody of children whose parents are accused of being un-American. Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives with his white father, Ethan, a former Harvard language teacher who now shelves books in the university’s library. Bird’s mother, Margaret Miu, a Chinese American poet, vanished three years earlier after her work became seen as subversive. Out of the blue, Bird receives a mysterious drawing from her, reminding him of a fairy tale she used to tell him, which he’s mostly forgotten. In a world where neighbors spy on each other and people with Asian features are frequently attacked on the street, Ethan has long instructed Bird to lay low. But nothing can stop him from looking for Margaret. While searching for a book that might contain the story Margaret used to tell him, he discovers a network of librarians who secretly collect information about children seized from their families and learns how Margaret’s work inspired anti-PACT art demonstrations. Ng crafts an affecting family drama out of the chilling and charged atmosphere, and shines especially when offering testimony to the power of art and storytelling (here’s Bird remembering the fairy tale in his mother’s voice, “painting a picture with words on the blank white wall of his mind. Long buried. Crackling as it surfaced in the air once more”). Like Margaret’s story, Ng’s latest crackles and sizzles all the way to the end.

  • AudioFile Magazine Actress Lucy Liu narrates Ng's latest, set in a chillingly plausible near future in which anti-Asian sentiment has reached shocking proportions. Twelve-year-old Bird, whose Chinese-American mother abandoned him years earlier, lives with his father, plagued by constant fear of the racist laws that govern their lives. Liu captures the intensity of this world, propulsively communicating Bird and his father's fear that the government will break up their family and take Bird away. While Liu effectively communicates the oppression of living under constant scrutiny, her steady staccato delivery is occasionally at odds with the lyricism of Ng's words. Closing the audio, Ng delivers the afterword with perfectly attuned emotion. Listeners may wish for a more nuanced overall presentation but will be captivated by this thought-provoking story. S.A.H. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
  • Library Journal

    Starred review from March 1, 2023

    In this timely and heart-wrenching novel, author Ng (Little Fires Everywhere) takes listeners to a time in the near future when the United States is ruled by fear and compliance with PACT--the dictatorial Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act. Passed during a time known as the Crisis, PACT harnessed fear and suspicion to legalize horrific acts, including rehoming children of dissidents (often Asian Americans) and purging libraries of books that are deemed unpatriotic. The main character, Bird Gardner, lost his mother because a line from a poem she wrote became the rallying cry of the opposition movement. His journey to find her is the heart of this story. Along the way, Ng reveals both the power and the limitations of art to bring about change, and the importance of trying, no matter the end result. Actor Lucy Liu infuses her narration with tension, adding to the unease that runs throughout the book. VERDICT Liu's gritty and driving narration stays true to the thrust of Ng's grim words; this is not a cozy listen, but one that keeps listeners on the edge of their seats. A necessary addition for all public libraries.--Gretchen Pruett

    Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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Reese's Book Club (A Novel)
Celeste Ng
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