{"id":29405,"date":"2021-12-13T11:34:26","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T15:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=29405"},"modified":"2021-12-14T11:56:19","modified_gmt":"2021-12-14T15:56:19","slug":"madeleine-thien-lu-reshaping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2021\/12\/13\/madeleine-thien-lu-reshaping\/","title":{"rendered":"Madeleine Thien: “Lu, Reshaping”"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/span><\/div>

“Lu, Reshaping”<\/strong><\/span>
\nby Madeleine Thien<\/span>
\nfrom the December 20, 2021 issue of\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/h3><\/div>

\"\"F<\/span>or some reason I thought that I had read something by Madeleine Thien before, but I don’t believe that is the case. She has published five books, starting with\u00a0Simple Recipes<\/em> in 2001, with her most recent being 2016’s\u00a0Do Not Say We Have Nothing<\/em>, and I have read none of them. Furthermore, I don’t think I’ve just gotten a glimpse at her work through a\u00a0New Yorker<\/em> story, as this is her first. It must just be that\u00a0Do Not Say We Have Nothing<\/em> was well received and beloved by many when it came out. It won both the Governor General’s Award and the Giller Prize and was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Baileys Women’s Prize, and the Rathbones Folio Prize (my, how prize names change over the years!). But I didn’t read it! If you read it, let me know if I should!<\/p>\n

Or maybe this story will convince me to finally pick it up! From her interview\u00a0<\/a>with Deborah Treisman, Thien mentions that she has been working on this story for years, and from my glimpse at it I’m intrigued and excited to finally dip into Thien’s work.<\/p>\n

\n

There were three pages to go, and it was already past midnight. Lu had asked her big daughter to edit her report for tomorrow\u2019s Purchasing meeting. This daughter, who was eleven, excelled at things like that.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMom,\u201d the girl said, \u201cwhy did you ask if a ghost hit the back of my head?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\u201cBecause you told your father I was home late, and I specifically told you not to do that. So why did you? Did a ghost hit the back of your head?\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cOh, ha.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

They were whispering back and forth in two languages, the girl in English and Lu in Cantonese. Tomorrow was a school day, and Lu could guess what Husband would say if he woke up and found them still working.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Please feel welcome to leave any comments you have below. I hope you’re having a great week!<\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div><\/div><\/span>

Please consider purchasing through Bookshop.org<\/h2><\/span>
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<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s New Yorker fiction is Madeleine Thien’s “Lu, Reshaping.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1434,94],"tags":[1393],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-29405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-madeleine-thien","category-new-yorker-fiction","tag-2021-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Lu-Reshaping.jpg?fit=700%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-7Eh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29410,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29405\/revisions\/29410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29405"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=29405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}