The Middle Kingdom
Page 26
You’ll have a girl, I remembered my mother-in-law telling me, years ago. With hair like yours. Then I remembered the pain I’d felt the night I spent with Rocky, that sharp click as the egg in my ovary had tumbled into its waiting nest. Was that possible? That Rocky had touched that egg, that the few hours we’d spent together should have been just the right few hours? I carried his blood in me, and Dr Yu’s and her husband’s and their dreams and their memories, as well as those of my parents and Mumu and Uncle Owen, and Dr Yu’s father who’d died in Shanghai, and my own and others I didn’t know but couldn’t deny.
Dr Yu led me around in a fancy turn, and as she steered me into a square of light I said, ‘You know, I think I might be pregnant.’
‘I know,’ she said, and the smile she gave me was so complex that I couldn’t tell if she’d be surprised when she first saw the face of my child. I still hadn’t discovered all Dr Yu had told me during my lost week; I still didn’t know all I’d told her. But now we had some time to sort it out. We joined ourselves to the back of a conga line that was circling the room, and as we did I thought I saw Zillah’s shadow again, dancing at the head of the line with her feet several inches above the ground and her wings outspread.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to fellow writers Tim J. Fox, James S. Gamble, Betsy Isbell, Laurence E. Keefe, Susan Keefe, John Strazzabosco and Deborah C. Weiss, for their constant support and helpful criticism.
Thanks also to Yaddo and to the MacDowell Colony, where parts of this book were written.
About the Author
Andrea Barrett lives in Rochester, New York. As well as Ship Fever – a collection of stories which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1996 – she is also the author of five novels, including the much acclaimed The Voyage of the Narwhal and The Forms of Water, both of which are available from Flamingo.
Praise for The Middle Kingdom
‘The Middle Kingdom opens dramatically in a Beijing torn apart by the Tiananmen Square massacres, with Grace Hoffmeier, its thirtysomething protagonist, cycling frantically around the smoke-strewn city with her two-year-old child strapped to her back, saying farewell to her Chinese friends and trying to fix a passage home. Several mysteries immediately cry out for solution: not only the obvious question of Grace’s presence in a determinedly anti-Western environment, but the conundrum of her son’s parentage. Jody, it is swiftly established, is half-Chinese … Even here in this early work, Barrett’s psychological touch is well developed. There is a wonderful defining moment when Walter, showing Grace – at this point his student lodger – her room, “reached down and straightened the rose-print quilt on the bed, which was already perfectly taut”.’
Spectator
‘By recapturing the powerful impact of the China experience, Andrea Barrett confronts us with the fickleness of our cultural affections, exhuming, as from a distant past, the lure of the Middle Kingdom … Alternating scenes from past and present powerfully convey the awakening and renewal that have often characterized the unwitting foreigner’s China passage.’
Los Angeles Times Book Review
‘An absorbing novel … Andrea Barrett sees Grace with wry perception and irony … Barrett must have had extensive experience of China herself – her novel reads like a memoir at times. The portrait of Dr Yu and her tribulations is sensitive and fascinating. And the book enshrines some Chinese thoughts, offered to the reader like small gifts. Dr Yu’s husband explains to Grace his tactic for remembering what mattered to him during the Cultural Revolution. He turned his mind, he says, into a memory palace, furnishing it gradually. I’d want to find a place for this novel somewhere on my palace bookshelf.’
Observer
‘A thoughtful novel, full of pearls of oriental wisdom’
Mirror
‘Finely honed … A subtle, luminous novel’
Detroit News
‘The honesty which is characteristic of all Andrea Barrett’s work may sometimes be painful but it is always compelling. And never more so than in The Middle Kingdom, which in addition to being an engrossing study of one woman’s struggle for self-fulfilment also provides a fascinating insight into life in post-Mao China … a powerful reminder of just how completely Barrett understands her characters and how expert she is at bringing them to life on the printed page. If you have yet to encounter Andrea Barrett’s thoughtful and evocative prose, wait no longer.’
Yorkshire Evening Post
‘With The Middle Kingdom, Andrea Barrett further consolidates her position as one of our most thoughtful chroniclers of contemporary life. It is another impressive milestone in what promises to be a long and fruitful literary journey by an accomplished American author.’
Cleveland Plain Dealer
‘The Middle Kingdom is engaging. Andrea Barrett writes with felicity, intelligence and humour.’
Washington Post
‘Alternating scenes from past and present, Andrea Barrett explores national characteristics and beliefs, vividly contrasting lifestyles and cultures. It’s a many-layered novel of relationships and discoveries that’s not quite what you might expect from the opening chapter.’
Choice
By the Same Author
Secret Harmonies
Lucid Stars
The Forms of Water
Ship Fever
The Voyage of the Narwhal
Copyright
Flamingo
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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Flamingo is a registered trade mark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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Copyright © Andrea Barrett 1991
Andrea Barrett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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EPub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780007396887
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