SPINSTER KANG

A Chinese immigrant in Toronto confronts her haunting family history. 

Thirty-something Kang moved to Canada from her native China six months ago. Her older sister, Jian, was raped years before, when Kang was 12, and the event permanently altered both their lives. Jian’s life was all but ruined, and Kang would view men with wary suspicion; back in China, she was labeled a “spinster,” and in Canada, she remains so closed to the idea of dating that she questions her identity: “Am I a woman? Kang sometimes asked herself. She certainly did not want to be a woman like her sister…abandoned by her fiancé, and married to a man without love.” She works hard and lives frugally in order to save enough to go back to school and become certified to teach, as she did in China. She finds a promising deal—a room with free rent in exchange for providing assistance to 60-something Tania, who grew up in the suburbs of Moscow during the Soviet era. Kang proofreads her memoir and is struck by the USSR’s similarities to China during the Cultural Revolution. She realizes that Tania’s biography overlaps with her own father’s, as he was a medical student in Moscow; this is particularly intriguing, as her dad’s past has always been shrouded in mystery. Meanwhile, she begins to fall for Tania’s nephew, Brian, and the two decide to travel to Russia, united in a desire to explore their roots. In this novel, Roy (Calls across the Pacific, 2015, etc.) powerfully describes the dark legacy of Kang’s sister’s sexual assault, which affected the entire family. Her transparent prose belies the story’s psychological complexity as Kang’s assiduous march into the future is shadowed by history. Both her father and sister suffered from the effects of different kinds of evil—Jian from a rapist, and her father from an oppressive state. Over the course of the story, the author manages to construct an exquisite exploration of the insidious power of personal history, combined with an unconventional account of the immigrant experience. 

A thoughtful and provocative depiction of how the past makes claims on the present.