LuLing Young is in her eighties, and finally beginning to feel the effects of old age. Trying to hold on to the evaporating past, she begins to write down all that she can remember of her life as a girl in China. Meanwhile, her daughter Ruth, a ghostwriter for authors of self-help books, is losing the ability to speak up for herself in front of the man she lives with. LuLing can only look on, helpless: her prickly relationship with her daughter does not make it easy to discuss such matters. In turn, Ruth has begun to suspect that something is wrong with her mother: she says so many confusing and contradictory things. Ruth decides to move in with her ailing mother, and while tending to her discovers the story LuLing wrote in Chinese, of her tumultuous life growing up in a remote mountain village known as Immortal Heart. LuLing tells of the secrets passed along by her mute nursemaid, Precious Auntie; of a cave where dragon bones are mined and where Peking Man was discovered; of the crumbling ravine known as the End of the World, where Precious Auntie's bones lie, and of the curse that LuLing believes she released through betrayal. Like layers of sediment being removed, each page unfolds into an even greater mystery: Who was Precious Auntie, whose suicide changed the path of LuLing's life?
Tag: Memoir
Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance is a memoir by Barack Obama.
Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes
This book includes several chapters of recipes, and describes how Mayes bought and restored an abandoned villa in the Tuscan countryside.
The Boy With No Shoes by William Horwood
This triumphant story of a boy's struggle with early trauma and his remarkable journey into adulthood is based on William Horwood's own remarkable childhood in south-east England after the Second World War.
Mukiwa by Peter Godwin
Peter Godwin grew up in Rhodesia in the 1960s, dimly aware of the divisions that would lead to civil war. This book tells of the guerilla killings, Godwin's conscription into the army aged 17, and his return to Zimbabwe as a reporter for the "Sunday Times" after studying law in England.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is a memoir by Dave Eggers released in 2000. It chronicles his stewardship of younger brother Christopher "Toph" Eggers following the cancer-related deaths of his parents.
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal
The Hare with Amber Eyes is a family memoir by British ceramicist Edmund de Waal.