11/04/2019
Lok’s impressive debut spills over with the diasporic voices of women displaced, disconnected, and discarded. From WWII Hong Kong to the streets of California over the last few decades, readers sail through various time periods, locales, and even genres. In the title story, a young girl, frightened by a stalker, is taught to defend herself by her quiet mother, who trained as a warrior during WWII in Hong Kong. As the young girl grows stronger, her mother finds the warrior within that she abandoned years ago. In “Wedding Night,” Lok uses an almost poemlike format—pages with one small phrase or paragraph on each—as readers witness the inner thoughts of a young couple on their wedding night, and learn of the past betrayal between them. And in the collection’s piece de resistance, “The Woman in the Closet,” readers follow Granny Ng, an elderly woman whose son wants to place her in an abusive nursing home. Instead, she escapes, first living in homeless encampments before sneaking into a young professional’s home, living in his closest for a year, and secretly cleaning and cooking for him. In all her stories, Lok is an expert at peeking into the souls of those who have been displaced or disregarded: through war, neglect, and even lost love. Seemingly simple yet deep in heart, this touching collection is easy to pick up and hard to put down. (Oct.)
These stories are tough, gorgeous and humane. They feel universal and also deeply specific. I loved the brash intelligence, the way this debut collection can be fun, funny and incredibly serious. How many versions of each one of us are there? One hopes Lok will have time to find more.
Spanning all different times and places, this moving collection should not be overlooked when it comes to literary award season.
In this eclectic and humorous debut collection, Lok intimately explores the lives of her Chinese diasporic characters as they wander through a lonely world, searching for emotional connection.
Electric Literature - Ruth Mina Buchwald
Mimi Lok's collection Last of Her Name features empathetically drawn characters whose lonely lives haunt the reader long after the book is closed.
Mimi Lok’s “Last of Her Name” is a smorgasbord of powerful writing and angsty emotion wrapped into eight meditations on what it means to feel slightly out of place ... her stories are insightful, painfully honest and deeply unsettling — a dynamite combination in a new writer on the scene.
San Francisco Chronicle - Alexis Hurling
Mimi Lok’s Last of Her Name is an eye-opening story collection about the intimate, interconnected lives of diasporic women and the histories they are born into.
The effect [of Last of Her Name] is a kaleidoscope of female desire, family, and resilience.
Through eight provocative stories, Lok’s sharp gaze transforms disconnection and longing with compelling results.
The stories in Mimi Lok’s Last of Her Name are more than just deeply felt, richly imagined, and darkly comic; they feel necessary. In these pages, we find fractals. The microscopic contains the macro. The collection ranges all over our globe while distilling breathtaking, tiny moments of tremendous significance.
Pen America - Editors at Pen America
Lok writes with the self-assuredness of a literary veteran and the insight of someone who's spent a lifetime studying how humans interact.
A mesmerizing and deeply felt debut that affirms all that is great about short fiction. ‘The Woman In the Closet’ has to be considered a new classic. Lok’s collection brings startling intimacy to her characters, all of them struggling with dislocation and belonging within the Chinese diaspora. I can’t think of a collection that better speaks to this moment of global movement and collective rupture from homes and history, and the struggle to find meaning despite it all.
Whether in seven pages or fifty, Lok brings each story to life in clear, precise prose, and draws the reader’s eye to strangeness and injustice without slipping into a didactic tone.
In her debut story collection, Last of Her Name, Mimi Lok is not interested in providing answers or pat endings. The stories open up, instead, in the way of myth or fairy tale, transcending the story itself.
Assured and keenly observed stories about the devastations—large and small—that transpire between people. Rendered in prose that’s no-nonsense, darkly funny, and lovely all at once, Lok’s stories carry quiet but undeniable impact. This is a book that stays with you long after you’ve put it down. It makes you wonder, as good books should, what on earth is going on in each of our brains.
Craft Literary - Rachel Khong
Lok has written the kind of understated book you catch yourself thinking about weeks after you finish it. Absorbing and deeply human, these characters — who either live in China or are of the Chinese diaspora — feel more like people you might’ve known than like fictitious renderings of Lok’s imagination. A pleasure to read and mull over for days.
New York Times: Book Review - Siobhan Jones
A 2020 PEN America Literary Awards Finalist for Debut Short Story Collection
Lok’s attention to detail and reflective connections make for an intimate and layered experience, for the characters and their readers.
Ms. Magazine - Karla Strand
Through eight provocative stories, Lok’s sharp gaze transforms disconnection and longing with compelling results.
These stories are tough, gorgeous and humane. They feel universal and also deeply specific. I loved the brash intelligence, the way this debut collection can be fun, funny and incredibly serious. How many versions of each one of us are there? One hopes Lok will have time to find more.
2019-07-31
Many of Lok's stories unfold in a series of juxtapositions; it's up to the reader to make connections between the different lives portrayed. For example, in "Last of Her Name," a Chinese girl in England dreams of living heroically like the martial artist protagonist of her favorite TV show while, in a series of flashbacks, the reader sees her mother struggling to survive in Hong Kong under Japanese assault during World War II. In "The Wrong Dave," a Chinese man in London strikes up a heartfelt email correspondence with a young woman in Hong Kong. He met her several years ago at a wedding, and when he gets an email from her out of the blue, seeming to pick up a conversation in the middle, he doesn't tell her he thinks she's sent her email to the wrong person named Dave. As he prepares for his wedding, he feels more emotionally open with her than with his own fiancee. A young woman in California cannot fathom her globe-trotting brother's joyful rootlessness in "Bad Influence." And in the novella The Woman in the Closet , an elderly homeless woman in Hong Kong moves into the closet of a busy, lonely young man and secretly insinuates herself into his life, taking over for his negligent housekeeper and his emotionally distant girlfriend. A few stories are more experimental in form: For example, one moody story, "Accident," lasts only two pages, and "Wedding Night" unfolds for stretches in a series of single paragraphs, one per page, relaying images and poetrylike moments in the characters' lives. Are disconnection and loneliness inevitable side effects of modern life or of living in diaspora? These stories raise intriguing questions but do not attempt any simple answers.
These eight stories highlight the lives of lonely people with empathy.
