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Red Oblivion Paperback – October 15, 2019

by Leslie Shimotakahara (Author)

4.5 15 ratings

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Family secrets surface when two sisters travel to Hong Kong to care for their ill father.
When Jill Lau receives an early morning phone call that her elderly father has fallen gravely ill, she and her sister, Celeste, catch the first flight from Toronto to Hong Kong. The man they find languishing in the hospital is a barely recognizable shadow of his old, indomitable self.

According to his housekeeper, a couple of mysterious photographs arrived anonymously in the mail in the days before his collapse. These pictures are only the first link in a chain of events that begin to reveal the truth about their father’s past and how he managed to escape from Guangzhou, China, during the Cultural Revolution to make a new life for himself in Hong Kong. Someone from the old days has returned to haunt him — exposing the terrible things he did to survive and flee one of the most violent periods of Chinese history, reinvent himself, and make the family fortune. Can Jill piece together the story of her family’s past without sacrificing her father's love and reputation?

Editorial Reviews

Review

A heartbreaking story in which the past haunts the present and bleeds into the future...She deftly articulates the many ways human beings can justify wrongdoing if it leads to a good outcome, describing the inconceivable with nuance while conveying both shock and banality. Shimotakahara displays virtuosity in this subtle deconstruction of one family's tainted origins. ― Kirkus Reviews

The author’s storytelling skills are impressive, painting a vivid image of past and present against a backdrop of complex family dynamics...Fans of literary historical fiction will enjoy this compelling story. ― Library Journal

A contemplation of family and the past in a rapidly changing, internationally important city with its own complicated history. ― Booklist

A story about life in contemporary Hong Kong as well as the region’s complicated history with mainland China, Red Oblivion feels particularly relevant to read in this current moment. ― Booktrib

Celeste and Jill Lau only begin to learn the truth about their father when they rush from Toronto to his hospital bedside in Hong Kong. Stubbornly silent about his early years in China, their Ba has been receiving threats that allude to a crime in his past, but still refuses to explain. Red Oblivion is one of the most masterful narratives I’ve ever read about a horrific chapter in China’s history, told through an intricate, mesmerizing tale of family and identity. Leslie Shimotakahara’s writing is both beautiful and bruising. ― Janie Chang, author of Dragon Springs Road

Red Oblivion is a beautifully written, gripping mystery which captures the struggles between generations, times, and places. Leslie Shimotakahara skillfully illustrates the internal conflicts of daughters with modern Canadian sensibilities challenged by age-old Chinese familial expectations. Detailed renderings of today's Hong Kong provide a fascinating backdrop for this engrossing tale of the continuing legacy of the Cultural Revolution. A literary page-turner. Shimotakahara's best work to date. ― Julia Lin, author of Shadows of the Crimson Sun

Haunting and true to life, Red Oblivion will captivate readers. Shimotakahara skillfully weaves history and imagination to tell a story about a daughter’s quest to unravel her father’s complicated past so that others can understand its far-reaching influence on their present lives. A strong narrative voice draws us into a world of secrets, sacrifices, and betrayals, transporting readers from Canada to Hong Kong and Guangzhou, China ― only to find that the complex truths that bind friendships and families are often universal. ― Ann Y.K. Choi, author of Kay's Lucky Coin Variety

[A] moving―and deeply honest―portrait of a family that desperately needs to let go of its baggage, so that they can move into a better future. ― A Bookish Type

I started reading Leslie Shimotakahara’s Red Oblivion in an airline waiting room with a storm brewing outside and found myself welcoming a flight delay because I might be able to keep reading for an extra couple of hours. In other words, it’s a very compelling book! ― Maria Meindl, 49th Shelf

Red Oblivion is a stirring tribute to Hong Kong and the role it served as a haven for refugees or anyone wishing to make a new start. Shimotakahara's descriptions of the territory are vivid and dreamy in the way that make us all long for a simpler time. ― Cha Journal

A quiet but sharp family mystery filled with secrets and omissions ... I was captivated by the plot and the prose. ― Audrey Huang, Belmont Books

Review

Shimotakahara’s writing is personal and entrancing ― Booklist, starred review for After the Bloom

Shimotakahara writes with refined sensitivity about the fragility of human nature, and how such vulnerability can transform into strength in the name of love. ― Ottawa Review of Books, for After the Bloom

About the Author

Leslie Shimotakahara holds a Ph.D. in English from Brown University. Her memoir, The Reading List, was winner of the Canada-Japan Literary Prize, and her fiction has been shortlisted for the KM Hunter Artist Award. Leslie lives in Toronto.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER ONE

The last time I saw my father, he seemed all right ― really, he did. He was his old self: a tiny, quail-like man with the gleaming eyes of a guy half his age. We were headed to the bank, the sky white and misty, the tropical air touched by a slight chill that people on this side of the world consider freezing; Ba was walking even faster than usual. The sole of his shoe came loose and slapped against the sidewalk like an old flip-flop, while he just continued on, navigating his way through the crowd of pinstripes. “Ba, let’s get you some new shoes.” I tried to pull him into Marks & Spencer, but he shucked off my hand with a fidgety shake of the shoulder.

I followed him beneath the billboards of enigmatically shaped handbags, past the shops on Queen’s Road, a sea of diamonds and metallic objects glinting and floating by on the edge of our vision. A watery reflection came into focus and I barely had time to recognize myself before the crowd jostled me forward. The side- walk seemed to be shuddering, everyone elbowing past, barking into phones. But my wily father had no trouble weaving his way through it all as I struggled to catch up.

After cutting across Grand Millennium Plaza ― space opening up enough to breathe, around the ornate fountain ― we made our way along Des Voeux into Sheung Wan. Although the neighbourhood had gentrified in patches, it still had the old money exchanges and remittance shops with faded red signs and tarnished gold currency symbols. Dry goods stores here and there, big bins of dehydrated mushrooms, scallops, and shark fins before the open windows. “Where are you going, Ba?” Grabbing his arm, I gestured at a storefront with rows of bright runners and plastic sandals awash in fluorescent light.

Ignoring me, he kept right on walking. We wended our way into the narrow side streets, past the herbal medicine shops.

Once when I was a kid and had a bad cough that wouldn’t go away, even after antibiotics, Ba had taken me to one of these places. We sat at the time-worn redwood counter, the walls decorated with bright paper fans and posters of ox bones and folk legends. After taking my pulse, an old man, who looked like a gravedigger, served me a cup of tea the colour of sewer water and not much better tasting. But my cough had cleared up.

“C’mon, Ba, let’s just get you some shoes. I don’t have all day here.”

His hand slipped into his pocket, fingering the wad of cash always there. Not because he was on the verge of buying anything, not because he was afraid of being pickpocketed. Ba has simply always liked the tactility of money. It’s like satin to his fingertips.

We weren’t far from his old office, so he ought to have known the area well, yet he seemed puzzled, disoriented.

“It’s right around here ― I know it is. ”

Probably, the store was long gone. It was a different, older city he was always seeking, remembering.

Finally, we ended up at Wing On department store, where I encouraged him to try on a pair of black Rockports, but they were too expensive, in his view. He picked up a pair of electric-blue sneakers with three gold stripes along each side, similar to the ones my high school boyfriend used to wear, twenty years back.

They were on sale ― hallelujah ― this being the real reason they’d caught Ba’s eye. And they were comfortable, he claimed. Not that he’s ever put much stock in comfort. His own or others’.

I remember thinking that at least in sneakers, he’d be unlikely to slip.

Or maybe it’s just easier for me to remember things that way. Me, the sweet, caring daughter, patiently cajoling the old guy, impossible as ever, yet strangely endearing in his stubbornness. Electric-blue sneakers and all.

In reality, on that day, I probably saw him as nothing close to endearing. The self-entitled frugality, the insistence on his way or the highway, the past he’s always seeking to resurrect and wear like a badge of honour ― all these things would have driven me crazy, his small, inescapable presence casting shadows over my mood.

But in seeing us in a soft, forgiving light, in telling myself these tales that make us seem more like a normal family, I’m doing what my sister’s long accused me of doing. I’m like a child seeking enchantment in repeated stories that take on the weight of truth only through an act of imagination.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dundurn Press (October 15, 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1459745213
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1459745216
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.5 inches

Customer Reviews:
4.5 15 ratings

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Leslie Shimotakahara

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Leslie Shimotakahara's memoir, The Reading List, won the Canada-Japan Literary Prize, and her fiction has been shortlisted for the KM Hunter Artist Award. She has written two critically acclaimed novels, After the Bloom and Red Oblivion. After the Bloom received a starred review from Booklist and is Bustle’s number one choice in “50 Books To Read With Your Book Club,” while Kirkus Reviews praised Red Oblivion for displaying “virtuosity in this subtle deconstruction of one family’s tainted origins.” Her writing has appeared in the National Post, World Literature Today, and Changing the Face of Canadian Literature, among other anthologies and periodicals. She completed a PhD in English at Brown University. She and her husband live in Toronto’s west end.

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P.B.Reader

A Well Written Treasure

Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2019

Jill Lau and her sister Celeste are called to Hong Kong where their taciturn Ba (father) is in intensive care after suffering a perforated bowel and the resultant surgery. Celeste has a love-hate relationship with Ba, while Jill, the favorite child, idolized her father, believed every one of his fantastical stories, and tried to remain his favorite well into adulthood. The sisters had moved to Toronto to attend university and never returned to Hong Kong except for brief visits. While they are in Hong Kong to tend to Ba this time, his secrets begin to unravel by someone sending photos of him and even all the trappings of a Chinese funeral. Jill is determined to finally find out what their father’s secrets are and it takes her back to Guangzhou, China, the violent cultural revolution of Chairman Mao, and her father’s remarkable escape to Hong Kong.

This book, told in Jill’s voice, is very well written. Her descriptions of Hong Kong will have you believing you’re walking the streets with many of the seven million inhabitants. Her telling us of the banyan trees growing out of the concrete retaining walls on the hillsides took me back to my own days of living there. Shimotakahara has created in a pitch-perfect way Jill’s voice as she begins to see her father for the man he was and not the man she thought he was. Jill is sometimes portrayed as immature in her continued need for her father’s approval and her inability to see that he was less than perfect, but by the end of the book she is all too aware that Ba was an imperfect human being.

Even if you have no desire to ever travel to Hong Kong, this book should intrigue you as Shimotakahara brings the westernized sisters back to their Chinese roots. If you don’t put this book on your to-be-read list, you will be missing a treasure.

My thanks to Ingram and Edelweiss for an eARC.

Helpful

Meredith Rankin

More literary fiction than mystery/thriller

Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2019

Unfortunately, this was not one of my favorite books of the year.

A major part of the fault is mine. Netgalley had this categorized both as general adult fiction and mystery/thriller. This book has mystery elements, but is not a traditional mystery; the answers to Jill’s questions will be obvious to anyone who reads many mysteries. It certainly isn’t a thriller, either.

That’s not a knock. It’s just to say that it’s literary, I expected mystery, and my expectations were not met.

(This has happened before with certain books. I’ve made a note to myself to be more careful with what I request on NetGalley. If it’s categorized as both general/literary fiction and mystery/thriller, I’ll assume that it’s more the former than the latter. I hope to avoid this situation in the future, as it's not fair to authors.)

Number 2 on the list of things that are my fault: I have never identified with stories where a sisterly relationship is a large factor. While Jill and Celeste’s relationship isn’t the driving force in this story, it’s still a large part and as an only child, I couldn’t understand it.

Neither is the author’s fault. But it still influenced how I read this novel. However, there was a lot to like about this book.

1. The writing quality
Shimotakahara has a lovely way with words. For the most part, her storytelling skills are top-notch. While I did feel that the pace dragged in many places, it wasn’t as slow as many literary novels I’ve read.

2. Cultural details
She paints a vivid image of a city of contradictions: modern technology exists beside old fashioned ways, such as clothes lines. (The cheap cost of housekeepers justifies the lack of a dryer or dishwasher.) Cantonese mixes with English words. Jill tells us, “Words like okay and anyway and cool and what the f— and see ya always get said in English, for some reason.” (chapter 1)

It’s a city where the new never fully obliterates the old. The past is always there: Mao’s Red Guards, the impact of World War II on Hong Kong, the Cultural Revolutions of the mid-1960s. All of these still influence the residents of Hong Kong, particularly the older people like Ba, who lived through it.

3. The characters
Jill, Ba, and Celeste are well-developed characters. While I was unsure if I found Jill likable, I did sympathize with her issues. Her life revolves around her father’s desires. Even when she’s rebelling against them, his desires are still determining her actions: what she won’t do.

There were some things I didn't enjoy, though. At several points, Jill is reading from a memoir. As both the memoir and the story are told from a first person point of view, it was difficult to shift between the two because of a lack of any distinguishing marks. (Nothing's set apart in italics or quotation marks, that sort of thing.) I hope the final print edition corrects this. The memoir is fascinating, though.

I was unconvinced by Jill's friendship with Terence, her only Hong Kong friend. To me, they didn't seem like old friends. Also, the climax felt underwhelming.

Overall, this is a solid novel. It wasn’t really to my taste. But for those who like literary fiction, this is a good choice.

Thanks to NetGalley and Dundurn Press for a copy of Red Oblivion in exchange for an honest review.

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Fran

Hidden Wartime Memories

Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2019

Two sisters, Jill and Celeste Lau, traveled from Toronto to Hong Kong after receiving a phone call that their ninety-four year old father was gravely ill. Ba's housekeeper informed them that their father had experienced sleeplessness and lack of appetite since two letters postmarked from Guangzhou arrived. These anonymous mailings and Ba's concern about possible subsequent communications are somehow linked to his secretive past in Guangzhou, his escape to Hong Kong during The Cultural Revolution, and his amassing wealth.

"Ba has simply always liked the tacility of money. It's like satin to his fingertips...not that he's ever put much stock in comfort, his own or others...The self-entitled frugality, the insistence on his way or the highway..." Celeste felt that Ba "raised our family like a business..." Jill and Celeste were fed implausible tales of escape and how Ba made his fortune. Jill's thoughts- "...I assumed that in reality Ba was ashamed of the way he'd made his escape." Jill stayed on in Hong Kong in an attempt to discover what acts of desperation committed by Ba would make "someone from the old days" in Guangzhou continue to haunt him. Celeste, unable to cope with Ba, returned to Toronto. Is the truth knowable? Should the daughters just be grateful that Ba provided them with a "lush life" even if built upon corrupt behavior? Ba's lips are sealed. No confession of wrongdoing is forthcoming.

"Red Oblivion" by Leslie Shimotakahara is a work of historical fiction exploring Guangzhou, China during The Cultural Revolution. Chaos and deprivation arguably set the stage for unscrupulous behavior. The tome explored strained family relationships and presented a window into cultural revolution struggles which included hard labor, arbitrary imprisonment and seizure of property.

Thank you Dundurn Press and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "Red Oblivion".

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Top reviews from other countries

Sandy

A Unique and Engrossing Read - Not to be Missed

Reviewed in Canada on January 29, 2020

Verified Purchase

Red Oblivion is a unique, compelling and utterly engaging novel, which provides an engrossing and interesting insight into modern-day life in Hong Kong and China, as well as a fascinating look back into history, through the lens of China’s Cultural Revolution. It’s an intriguing story, incorporating a history lesson, mystery and an examination of family secrets into one beautifully written book. Shimotakahara writes with impressive skill, deftly detailing the most complex family dynamics and the powerful feelings experienced when the past is exposed. I could not put it down

Naomi Hamilton

Compelling Story of Father’s Secret Past

Reviewed in Canada on October 4, 2019

Verified Purchase

The author’s skillful expression of complicated relationships between family members as she investigates her father’s secret actions to survive the Cultural Revolution made Red Oblivion a compelling story to read. The novel is beautifully written and hard to put down.

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