Bestselling American author Celeste Ng’s third novel is a feat of meaty storytelling wrapped around a stark warning about the present day’s racial divisions, political conflicts and inequality. It’s anchored by two fictional conceits: a global “crisis” that tilts the international power balance away from the US and a subsequent piece of US legislation called Pact, the Preserving of American Cultures and Traditions Act. Frighteningly fast, the US develops into a jingoistic, ignorant and violently hostile society governed by racist fear and loathing, in particular of east Asians.
Noah Gardner, the young, half-Chinese American hero of the novel, grows up in this dangerous environment, one in which police violence, censorship and discriminatory segregation are the norm. His mother, a famous Chinese-American artist who left him and his father when he was a kid, kickstarts the plot by sending him a letter – already opened and read by the authorities – covered in drawings. What do they mean and what was the real reason for her disappearance?
With this mystery sparked, Our Missing Hearts manages to wrench adventure, heroism and bravery from a painful set-up. To put it crudely, it does for race what The Handmaid’s Tale did for sex. As Noah discovers more about the crisis and the family separations, protests, internments and increasing authoritarianism that followed, he is forced to grow up, find himself as an individual and take a stand as one member of a community. Throughout, the writing is quick and poised, even in the descriptions of an ordinary room: “A faded and fraying sofa hunched by the wall, a folded card table covered with tools. A single lamp minus its shade, naked bulb staring.”
Ng effortlessly combines a character-led family story with a detective tale, a tribute to books and storytelling and a confrontation with history. Her portrait of Noah’s mother, Margaret Miu, enables her to have some fun with standard arts festival panel questions. What is the true role of the artist in society? Is art personal expression or political commentary? Are artists powerful or powerless? Is creation resistance? Can it make any difference to events? Margaret is at once a fiercely loving mother, an artist completely absorbed in her work and a political activist whose creations inspire the activism of others. Ng’s take is wryly recognisable. In one scene, Noah interrupts his mother working and tells her he’s hungry. Margaret “returns with a jolt, glances at her watch… I get caught up working, she says, almost embarrassed. I forget to keep food around.”
While Pact and the crisis may be inventions, it would be wrong to call the novel prophetic or futuristic. All the elements of the novel’s setting are already here, readable in the headlines every morning. We are already well past a certain point that Ng describes: “Pact was decades away, but her parents felt it already: the eyes of the neighbourhood scrutinising their every move. Blending in, they decided, was their best option.” And while the abuses that are heaped on east Asians in the novel are ugly and painful, they will be familiar to anyone with even a glancing awareness of the Black American experience: “In Orange county a march protesting anti-Chinese bias spiralled into a clash with bystanders hurling epithets, ending with riot police, Tasers, a Chinese-American three-year-old struck with a teargas canister. For the officers, paid leave; for the protester, a full investigation into the family.”
The America of Our Missing Hearts is already with us. From these dark roots, Celeste Ng crafts a story that is exceptionally powerful and scaldingly relevant.
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng is published by Little, Brown (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
