Imagine that you fall ill, awakening later to find that days have passed and your world, your family, has changed forever. Irreparably. This is the situation in which ten-year-old Gavin finds himself at the opening of Chia-Chia Lin’s The Unpassing. Feeling unwell one day upon returning home from school, Gavin lays down to rest. The next thing he knows, he wakes up to learn that he contracted meningitis. A week ago. So did his youngest sister, Ruby. And while Gavin was fighting for his life, Ruby slipped away.
The narrative that unfolds from here is beautifully written and heart-wrenching, understated and captivating. Focused on the aftermath of Ruby’s unexpected death, the story follows this family of immigrants from Taiwan, now living in Alaska, and explores the profound effects of their loss. Individually and collectively the family struggles with living in a community that they do not feel is their own, a country that has not brought them the good fortune that they dreamed about, while simultaneously fighting to make it through each painful day without Ruby. The context within which this loss occurs also amplifies the story. Set in the 1980s, there is the unique counterpoint of another horrific event with the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, which occurs during the same week as Ruby’s death. The lush landscape of the Alaskan wilderness, vividly described throughout the book, also works as a sharp contrast to the emptiness that the family feels.
The Unpassing is a tale that meditates on themes of life and the weight of grief, identity and finding one’s place, family and culture. The prose in this novel is spare and haunting. Losing a child is the most terrifying, painful experience that any parent could imagine and Lin convincingly weaves a depth of emotion throughout each chapter. Little background is given about the family before this catastrophic event, which emphasises how the loss of Ruby defines them all, overshadowing their previous lives. Lin also skilfully embeds small details – a tree in the home which goes unwatered, trash piling up without being removed – which help convey the family’s grief, painting a picture of how their lives change day by day.
This novel drew to mind We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates, as both works examine the everyday reality and aftermath of a shocking event, the effects on a family, and how it changes them in ways both great and small. The story feels so real, narrating the every-day moments and experiences of the characters in a subtle way that causes the events to actually carry an added weight. The Unpassing is a strongly character-driven work and if you are looking for a story with a quick plot, you will not find it here. However, as a reader you will be immersed in the pain of this family from the start and your heart will ache for them long after you have closed the book. There may be a temptation to speed through this novel, as it appears, on the surface, to be an easy read. I strongly recommend against this. Take your time, absorb the simple and beautiful language, give yourself ample opportunity to feel the underlying emotion. Lin’s writing is worth the extra time and attention.
My sincere thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advance electronic copy in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are mine.
Chia-Chia Lin is a graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received an MFA in Fiction and was awarded with the Henfield Prize. Her short stories have been featured in The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, and other journals. The Unpassing is Lin’s first novel and it has been heralded by the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Southern Living, and Literary Hub, among others, as one of the most anticipated books of 2019.
The Unpassing is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
A searing debut novel that explores community, identity, and the myth of the American dream through an immigrant family in Alaska.
In Chia-Chia Lin’s debut novel, The Unpassing, we meet a Taiwanese immigrant family of six struggling to make ends meet on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska. The father, hardworking but beaten down, is employed as a plumber and repairman, while the mother, a loving, strong-willed, and unpredictably emotional matriarch, holds the house together. When ten-year-old Gavin contracts meningitis at school, he falls into a deep, nearly fatal coma. He wakes up a week later to learn that his little sister Ruby was infected, too. She did not survive.
Routine takes over for the grieving family: the siblings care for each other as they befriend a neighboring family and explore the woods; distance grows between the parents as they deal with their loss separately. But things spiral when the father, increasingly guilt ridden after Ruby’s death, is sued for not properly installing a septic tank, which results in grave harm to a little boy. In the ensuing chaos, what really happened to Ruby finally emerges.
With flowing prose that evokes the terrifying beauty of the Alaskan wilderness, Lin explores the fallout after the loss of a child and the way in which a family is forced to grieve in a place that doesn’t yet feel like home. Emotionally raw and subtly suspenseful, The Unpassing is a deeply felt family saga that dismisses the American dream for a harsher, but ultimately more profound, reality.
