Review of SWIMMING BACK TO TROUT RIVER by Linda Rui Feng (New Release)

 4 Stars

This novel examines both how people are tethered by “the most ethereal of tendrils” to each other “in ways large or small, for a few minutes or for decades” and how individuals are insignificant in “the makings and transmutations of the world.”  Characters are brought together, tethered, at certain times, while also profoundly affected by social and political events “indifferent to human pain.”

Momo grows up in rural China in the village of Trout River.  He gains entrance to university where he meets Dawn, a budding violinist, who introduces him to classical music.  They lose touch after graduation when they are sent to work in different parts of the country.  Momo meets Cassia, a nurse, and the two marry and have a daughter Junie who is born without lower limbs.  Momo leaves for graduate school in the U.S., with plans that Cassia and Junie will eventually join him.  But Junie who has been raised by her paternal grandparents in Trout River doesn’t want to leave, and Cassia who has suffered several tragedies, does not see her future as Momo does.

The novel is narrated from the perspective of these four characters.  We see Momo’s life:  his university years, his marriage, and his adjustment to life in the U.S.  We see Dawn’s early years living with her grandfather, her love of music, and her pursuit of a career as a violinist.  We see Cassia’s meeting with Momo, her marriage, and her struggles with motherhood because of trauma from her past.  And we see Junie’s life with her grandparents who work to expand her world despite her physical limitations.

Momo, Dawn, and Cassia are all affected by China’s Cultural Revolution.  For years, Dawn cannot pursue a career as a violinist because even listening to Western music is a political crime:  “her ambition was the wrong tonality and color for the world.”  Both Momo and Cassia witness purges that affect them.    In essence, each of these must sacrifice dreams because of societal transformations happening around them. 

Each of the characters is well developed; their motivations are made clear so their actions are understandable.  What means the most to Momo is “to offer up his service to people ready to slaughter their donkey to send off a university student from their village.”  Dawn “’can’t bear to be alive without [music].’”  Cassia is emotionally scarred and is unable to move on; she knows that “Even a dull child . . . would have sensed her afflictions from the past and sussed out her ever-present presentiment of loss.”

The adults are all on journeys towards healing from loss and transforming into new lives.  Dawn takes drastic steps to pursue her career.  Cassia makes a momentous decision on her way to join her husband.  Momo works at bringing together his family which necessitates repairing his fractured relationship with Cassia.  The ending of the novel, though tinged with more tragedy, is hopeful as two people are tethered.

People may suffer in the face of a repressive regime indifferent to human suffering but people can also find what they need in a connection, however brief, with another person.  Just as Cassia as a child gives a stranger comfort without knowing it, Dawn meets people who made her career possible:  “’I washed up on these shores like a beached whale, and all of you . . . helped me grow my first pair of feet, and then helped me learn to stand on them.’”  Momo writes letters to a young violinist so two people meet “’By accident, or almost accident’” and “two commingled notes began to sound sweeter every second.”

I appreciated the author’s approach to explaining the Cultural Revolution.  She is not heavy-handed; instead, she inserts statements that say much in few words:  during this time, “gossip [led] to conjectures, which became accusations and verdicts over time; information that could be bartered for favors, exemptions, tokens of power.”  One man knows that “his own peasant pedigree was unassailable, and he knew that by marrying into his family, she’d be elevated from the class of intelligentsia suspected of unsavory, unrevolutionary activities.”  When a woman lowers her head to think, a young child interprets the gesture as sadness because “in a world where nothing was left standing, every gesture that involved turning the face away was interpreted as grief.”

As I was reading this book, I was often reminded of some similarities with Madeleine Thien’s novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing which focuses on a pianist, a composer, and a violinist studying music at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2016/10/review-of-do-not-say-we-have-nothing-by.html).  

Swimming Back to Trout River is a beautifully written novel filled with tragedy, but it still manages to highlight human resilience. 

Note:  I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.