Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
 | Author:
Rachael Elliott-Brug, Reading Leaves
Rachael Brug: MT43 News Vice President and Copy Editor |
Our Missing Hearts' by Celeste Ng Rachael Elliott-Brug, Reading Leaves While calling this novel dystopian may cause some to shy away from reading it, I really hope it doesn't. Celeste Ng's dystopian America is more delicate than other dystopias, which makes it more believable — and because of this, more upsetting. The America in which twelve-year-old Bird and his family live is full of fear, bigotry, and racial prejudices. There are family separations, censorship, and book burnings, but there are also flickers of hope, humanity and the sweetness of the unbreakable love between a mother and her child. Bird's mother disappears one day, and his father won't talk about it. Bird is to tell anyone who mentions her that she is not a part of their lives anymore. The world has changed, and now they must walk very quietly so as not to be reported for being 'unpatriotic'. Other children all over the country have been ripped from their families and relocated to new families. After receiving a puzzling message, he knows is from his mother, Bird begins to piece together clues on a quest to find answers, and his mother.
You may have heard of Celeste Ng's previous novel "Little Fires Everywhere", which has now been brought to life on Hulu. Ng has unapologetically written this book about big themes. It is also deeply poetic, beautifully and succinctly written, and thoroughly immersive. It contains lifesaving storytelling (and seemingly omniscient librarians!), brilliantly subversive art, and accidentally transformative activism. As lyrical as it is chilling, as astonishing as it is empathic, "Our Missing Hearts" is a book you won’t be able to put down, nor stop thinking about long after you do.
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