The 15 short stories in Alexandra Chang's insightful second book, Tomb Sweeping, feature Asian and Asian American characters facing lost or altered relationships. In each selection, a conflict arises when technology or a chance of success is at odds with tradition or with valuing one's family.
Chang (Days of Distraction) uses first- and third-person narration roughly equally. "Unknown by Unknown" stars a 30-something California woman who, recently laid off, takes a house-sitting job and becomes obsessed with a particular painting on display. Notebooks full of sketches by the same artist mysteriously arrive on the doorstep. A delicious hint of the magical is also present in the collection's standout, "Farewell, Hank." Adrienne and her mother, Jia, attend a living funeral that Orchid Lady throws for her ill husband. Learning of their hostess's habit of sprinkling loved ones' ashes on young plants as a form of reincarnation, they set their skepticism aside and decide to do the same with Adrienne's late father's remains.
Several of the stories are built around before-and-after storylines. For instance, in "Klara," the narrator's meeting with Klara, an old friend, in New York City gives her the opportunity to look back at their college years and ponder the causes of their estrangement. "Cure for Life" muses on the perhaps inappropriate relationship between grocery store colleagues by following up with them a decade later. In the tale with the most innovative structure, "Li Fan," the life of an "Asian recycling lady" unwinds backward from her death.
What links all the stories, though, is Chang's curiosity about unfolding lives and her keen insight into relationships. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck