Julie Wu's The Third Son
Wu's first novel begins in Taiwan during WWII; a little boy and a little girl meet during an air-raid and help save each other, and he longs to meet her again. But it's primarily the story of the boy, Saburo, and his ambitions, despite the disadvantage of having an AMAZINGLY HORRIBLE family. I will say that the characterizations of his parents are a bit too weak for their actions to be entirely believable, but Saburo and Yoshiko (the girl) are both pretty great, and I loved all their interactions. I also especially appreciated the depiction of history at a turbulent time in Asia (the story goes up through the early 60s) and the effects on Taiwan--really fascinating stuff, and not stuff I get to read about very often. I think this could be a good pick for book groups--it's got a lot of different aspects to discuss. A-/B+.
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A review copy was provided by the publisher. This book will be released in April.
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