Starred review from September 6, 2021
Fletcher impresses in this searing debut, an epic historical about the suffering resulting from the Second Sino-Japanese War in China that began in 1937. The opening sections introduce Wei, a farmer, on his ancestral lands in North China. His diligent preparations for winter are disrupted when his eldest daughter, nicknamed Spider Girl for her awkward gait stemming from rickets, warns him that the entire clan must flee at once. The dark cloud he spots on the horizon is a sign of the invading Japanese army, she says, whose forces have been massacring Chinese civilians. Wei gets his family away in time, only to confront devastating heartbreak on the road to Wuhan, the southern city that, according to news reports, was attracting refugees. The impact of the Japanese incursion is also portrayed from the perspective of Lao She, an intellectual who feels his country has been damaged by dogged adherence to rigid Confucianism, which “tie down individuals, and the whole country, into a vicious web of obligation and service.” Lao is in Jinan when that city is imperiled by Japanese troops, and makes the wrenching choice to leave his family to aid his country’s war effort as a propagandist in Wuhan. Fletcher makes all his characters realistic, even if they only appear briefly, and excels at portraying the horrors of war and the moral challenges it poses. Fans of J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun will be riveted.