Algonquin Books, May 2, 2017.
Five Stars
Deming Guo is an eleven-year-old boy, raised by his
single mom Polly in the Bronx. They live with Polly’s boyfriend Leon, his
sister Vivian and her son, Michael. While unrelated by blood, the surrogate
family forms a strong bond over their shared experience as Chinese immigrants
in America. Although she is an undocumented immigrant, Polly works relentlessly
as a nail technician to support her family, hoping to one day get ahead and
live the American dream. However, that dream disappears when Polly fails to
return home from work one day, never to be seen again.
No one knows whether Polly disappeared by choice or
if something tragic happened to her. Without knowing if Polly will even return,
Vivian is forced to surrender Deming to the foster care system, where he is
eventually adopted by a married couple – older, white college professors who
are desperate for a child. Moved upstate with Peter and Kay, Deming is renamed
Daniel Wilkinson and forced to assimilate into his mostly white community. His
adoptive parents have wonderful intentions, but they cannot truly understand
what their son is going through.
Ko perfectly captures the confusion and pain of a
young boy in a complicated and difficult situation. Polly’s disappearance is
never fully explained to Daniel, and he is haunted and damaged by what he feels
as her abandonment. The memories of the family he left behind cast a shadow
over his seemingly idyllic childhood, and it is not until much later that
Daniel understands that his mother may not have had a choice to leave him.
The novel catches up with Daniel at age eighteen – he
has dropped out of college and is living on his best friend’s couch, playing unsuccessful
gigs with his band. Through his music, he reconnects with his surrogate brother
Michael, and Michael’s mother Vivian. Although they still do not know what
happened to Polly, Daniel uses the information they give him to follow a trail
back to China, where he is able to fill in the details about Polly’s past. He
begins to understand why Polly made the choices that she did, both by coming to
America and by sacrificing everything to give her child a better life than she
had.
The alternating perspectives of Polly and
Deming/Daniel create intriguing parallels between the two, as they both
struggle to do the right thing for themselves and their loved ones. Both mother
and son feel out of place in their worlds, and they are continually torn
between their pasts and possible futures. These are very complex characters –
they’re not always likeable and they make poor decisions in retrospect, but I couldn’t
help but admire their strength, and their ability to grow and adapt to their
circumstances. The Leavers is an
eye-opening account of the immigrant experience and its effects on the children
for generations to come. This stunning debut novel won the PEN/Bellwether Prize
for a novel that addresses issues of social justice, and it is well-deserved
and well worth the read.
I received this book from Algonquin Books and
NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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