World and Town: A Novel

by Gish Jen Narrated by Janet Song

Overview

Sixty-eight-year-old Hattie Kong, descendant of Confucius, daughter of an American missionary, has lived to see both her husband and her best friend die back-to-back in a single year: “It was like having twins...She got to book the same church with the same pianist for both funerals and did think she should have gotten some sort of twofer from the crematorium.”

But two years later, it's time for Hattie to start over. She moves to a small New England town where she is soon joined by a Cambodian American family and an ex-lover-now a retired neuroscientist-all of them looking for their own new lives.

What Hattie makes of this situation and of the changing town of Riverlake-challenged as it is, in 2001, by fundamentalist Christians, struggling family farms, and unexpected immigrants-lies at the center of a novel that asks deep and absorbing questions about religion, home, and what “worlds” we make of the world.

Moving, humorous, and broad-ranging, World and Town is rich in character and brilliantly evocative of its time and place. This is a masterful novel from one of our most admired writers.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Jen (The Love Wife) unwinds another expansive story of identity and acceptance, deploying voices that are as haunting and revealing as they are original. Hattie Kong, 68 and full of unresolved longing for her dead husband, her best friend, and an old lover, finds a sort of purpose in the new neighbors, an immigrant Cambodian family. As she nurtures a friendship with the family’s teenage daughter, Sophy, Hattie learns the family’s secrets. Sophy’s father, Chhung, has survived the horrors of Pol Pot, marrying Sophy’s mother in a refugee camp and adopting her brother, Sarun. Sarun and Sophy founder in America; Sarun has gang ties, and Sophy becomes involved with manipulative evangelicals. Chhung, isolated and unable to cope with his children, spends his days digging a pit behind their cramped trailer until one day he implodes in an act of horrifying violence. While pondering how to help the family, Hattie discovers much about her own motivations and her place in the world as the daughter of an American missionary and a descendant of Confucius. Jen’s prose is unique, dense, and enthralling, and her characters are marvels of authenticity. (Oct.)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169607567
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	10/13/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged

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