Little Reunions (2009)
Eileen Chang (1920-1995)
332 pages
Early in Eileen Chang’s novel Little Reunions, her main character, Julie, muses on the complicated history and messy present of her family:
Memories, happy or not, always embodied a doleful note …. She never sought out melancholy, but life unavoidably overflowed with it. Just thinking [about her family’s past] made her feel like she was standing in the portal of an ancient edifice, peering through the moonlight and dark shade that permeated the ruins of a once novel and illustrious household, which was now nothing more than scattered shards of roof tiles and piles of rubble from collapse walls. That instant of knowing what once existed here. (67-68)But the apple does not fall far from the tree, and Julie herself struggles to escape the long shadow of her family’s tendency toward dysfunction. Though able to recognize foibles and frailties in her family, friends and acquaintances, she finds herself cursed with many of these same weaknesses, leaving her no more able to elude unpromising relationships than the rest of her family.
The story opens in the fall of 1941, with Julie beginning her fourth year studying at a convent school in Hong Kong, having left her home in Shanghai in the wake of its occupation by the Japanese. By December the Japanese have taken control of Hong Kong too, and with the convent shut down and little else holding her to Hong Kong, Julie returns home to Shanghai. There, freed from the demands of school but also without a degree, she struggles to find her bearings, not least because she must once again navigate the intricate machinations of her family.
Further complicating her attempts to build a life for herself in Shanghai are the destruction and chaos that enveloped mid-twentieth century China. The long and painful Chinese civil war that dominated the period was interrupted for a time by the horrors of the Japanese invasion, before re-starting with a vengeance once the Japanese were defeated by the Americans. These geo-political events form the back drop of Chang’s story, as they did for her novel Naked Earth and the short stories of her collection Love in a Fallen City. (My reviews of these linked to at right.) 
In fact, Julie’s observations about her family quoted earlier, describing “an ancient edifice, … the moonlight and dark shadows that permeated the ruins of a once noble and illustrious household … now nothing more than scattered shards … and piles of rubble,” also succinctly depict China at this nadir of its history. The resulting disruptions of these wars, both in terms of the restriction on movement, as well as the acceleration of social transformations driven by outside influences, serve to complicate Julie’s already strained relationships.And these challenging relationships begin with the one between Julie and her mother. Already in the opening pages we learn that
Julie’s uncle [on her father’s side] had no daughter of his own, so there was a verbal agreement that he adopt her. Consequently, Julie began calling her birth parents Second Aunt and Second Uncle, and since childhood found this arrangement liberating. (12)Julie’s birth mother too has taken full advantage of the freedom this situation has given her. Divorced even before Julie moves to Hong Kong to study, her mother travels abroad for years at a time, all the while cycling through a series of temporary relationships. With neither mother nor daughter quite satisfied with their own lives, and each critical of the other’s choices, their little reunions tend to play out as deeply strained reconciliations, despite the biological ties that bind them.
However much Julie may have enjoyed the freedom these “peculiar” (12) family arrangements gave her as she grew up, their full impacts become clear as she reaches adulthood. The complexity of her family life, and her on-again, off-again connection with her mother become a hallmark of her dating relationships. When the charismatic Chih-yung enters her life and eventually becomes her husband, she finds herself struggling to create the deep relationship with him that she longs for.
Chang’s approach to telling the story reflects the complexity of the relationships it describes. Though structured around a nominal timeline of Julie’s recollections of her experiences from just before the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in late 1941 up to around the time of the end of the Chinese civil war in 1950, the story has the flighty, stream-of-consciousness nature reminiscent of the running dialogue we most of us have running through our heads about ourselves and our lives as we go through the day. Julie will be present in a particular moment and scene, and suddenly some action or smell or word will transport her thoughts to a time in her past, or occasionally her future. Then, just as suddenly, she will return to the present, though not always at the same moment she had left from.
As would be true for someone who could hear our own often jumbled thoughts, these transitions happen without warning, with nothing flagging that Julie has jumped forward or backward in time. But readers who allow themselves to be drawn into the flow and pattern of her thinking, and the intensity of her experiences, are rewarded for their effort. Within the interconnected puzzle pieces of the life that she presents us, we come to discover a wonderful, if dark and melancholy, character study of a woman coming of age in a rapidly changing China, a country struggling to find its place in the modern world during a long period of disruption and uncertainty.
Other reviews / information:
According to the Translator's Note in the book, "Eileen Chang completed Little Reunions in 1976 and sent [it to friends] who later became her literary executors." (vii)
This another wonderful selection in the New York Review of Books (NYRB) Classics collection.
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
