Dear Chrysanthemums: A Novel in Stories

Musician, translator, and poet Sze-Lorrain (The Ruined Elegance) offers a beautiful and heartbreaking collection of connected stories featuring women navigating times of great change in Chinese history. Spanning 1946 to 2016, each chapter occurs in a year ending in the number six—in China, a divine number representing “a smooth life, a perfect path.” The content herein is anything but easy, however, as it confronts grief, loss, adultery, exile, and trauma. Among the stories is “Death at Wukang Mansion, 1966,” a former dancer charged with having an affair spends her days in an apartment where tenants leave in coffins. Exiled in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, three women gather together in a church in France in “The Invisible Window, 2016.” In “The White Piano, 1966,” a pianist settling into life in Paris is assaulted following the surprise arrival of a piano. Narrator Catherine Ho enhances the stories with varied characterizations, capturing the many experiences, attitudes, and emotions of the women Sze-Lorrain describes. Ho’s superb pacing will keep listeners engaged through the ins and outs of changing time periods and settings.