The Unpassing
Chia-Chia Lin
An excellent debut novel. (I was about to say “enjoyable,” but that’s not quite the word given the amount of sad content.) I appreciated Lin’s narration from a kid’s point of view, which leaves the reader to infer a lot of plot detail that the narrator hasn’t fully grasped. Lin does this deftly, without hitting us over the head with situational irony. She also has a great eye for detail while maintaining a spare writing style–even a month or so after finishing the book, I can call to mind several scenes in great mental detail, even ones where nothing of particular plot importance happens.