Our Missing Hearts

Description

Named a Most-Anticipated Book by TIME, Vulture, Buzzfeed, The Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press, The Millions, LitHub, Goodreads, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus and more… 
“As lyrical as it is chilling, as astonishing as it is empathic, Our Missing Hearts arguably achieves literary perfection.”  —Booklist (starred review)From the number one bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere, a deeply suspenseful and heartrending novel about the unbreakable love between a mother and child in a society consumed by fearTwelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture” in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.
 
Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.
 
Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It’s a story about the power—and limitations—of art to create change, the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and how any of us can survive a broken world with our hearts intact. “Known for focusing on families, race, and relationships, Ng raises the bar another notch in a story intensified by reference to such police violence, political protest, book banning, and discrimination against people of color. Ng’s beautiful yet chilling tale will resonate with readers who enjoyed Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Jessamine Chan’s more recent School for Good Mothers. As with her previous novels, her storytelling will not disappoint.” —Library Journal (starred review)  
“Sensitive, nuanced, and vividly drawn . . . Thoroughly engrossing and deeply moving . . . Taut and terrifying, Ng’s cautionary tale transports us into an American tomorrow that is all too easy to imagine.” —Kirkus (starred review)“Remarkable . . . Ng crafts an affecting family drama out of the chilling and charged atmosphere, and shines especially when offering testimony to the power of art and storytelling . . . Ng’s latest crackles and sizzles all the way to the end.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)“[So] much of this utterly stupendous tale is hauntingly, horrifically, historically, currently all too real, from removing and caging children to anti-Asian hate crimes, violent protests, police brutality, and despotic (so-called) leadership. Yet Ng creates an exquisite story of unbreakable family bonds, lifesaving storytelling (and seemingly omniscient librarians!), brilliantly subversive art, and accidentally transformative activism. As lyrical as it is chilling, as astonishing as it is empathic, Our Missing Hearts arguably achieves literary perfection.” —Booklist (starred review)
“Celeste Ng is undoubt­edly at the top of her game . . .  Ng’s prose highlights the fateful and some­times absurd connections between our world and the realm of ideas, reminding readers that what is in our heads will always reveal itself in our bodies. The result is a novel that will undoubtedly impact how we connect and live in this terrifying, beautiful world.” —BookPage (starred review)“What an immense joy it is to be back in the trusty hands of Celeste Ng! Like Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You, Our Missing Hearts is a careful study of a family trying their best to live their lives in a world that is rooting against them . . . [W]hat’s particularly striking is Celeste Ng’s ability to show us the horrors of this world while also showing how banal it’s become for our characters . . . This is a tale that is propulsive and poignant in equal measure; it’s a much-needed love letter to the written word.” —Literary Hub, 22 Novels You Need to Read This Fall“An eerie, prophetic novel . . . [that] showcases Ng’s own ingenuity and range. Brilliantly envisioned and filled with Ng’s signature tender, intimate character work and complex family dynamics, this coming-of-age story asks what it means to be a good parent or a good citizen when every child is at risk, as well as what power art has to challenge injustice.” —Shelf AwarenessPRAISE FOR THE WORK OF CELESTE NG:
 
“Witnessing these two families as they commingle and clash is an utterly engrossing, often heartbreaking, deeply empathetic experience . . . The magic of this novel lies in its power to implicate all of its characters—and likely many of its readers—in that innocent delusion [of a post-racial America]. Who set the littles fires everywhere? We keep reading to find out, even as we suspect that it could be us with ash on our hands.” —Eleanor Henderson, The New York Times Book Review  
“Ng has one-upped herself with her tremendous follow-up novel . . . a finely wrought meditation on the nature of motherhood, the dangers of privilege and a cautionary tale about how even the tiniest of secrets can rip families apart . . . Ng is a master at pushing us to look at our personal and societal flaws in the face and see them with new eyes . . . If Little Fires Everywhere doesn’t give you pause and help you think differently about humanity and this country’s current state of affairs, start over from the beginning and read the book again.” —San Francisco Chronicle  
“Stellar . . . Ng is a confident, talented writer, and it’s a pleasure to inhabit the lives of her characters and experience the rhythms of Shaker Heights through her clean, observant prose . . . There’s a lovely, balanced, dioramic quality to this novel . . . broad in scope and fine in detail, all while keeping the story moving at a thriller’s pace.” —Los Angeles Times
“[A] stark and stunning fable.” —Los Angeles Times, Most Anticipated Books of the Fall
“Ng is very good at writing social commentary that’s too full of heart and humanity to feel preachy . . . almost folkloric . . . But as Ng shifts perspectives and fills in the details of how America became the version of itself her book describes, things get scarily real.” —Vulture, Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Fall  
“Delectable and engrossing . . . A complex and compulsively readable suburban saga that is deeply invested in mothers and daughters . . . What Ng has written, in this thoroughly entertaining novel, is a pointed and persuasive social critique, teasing out the myriad forms of privilege and predation that stand between so many people and their achievement of the American dream. But there is a heartening optimism, too. This is a book that believes in the transformative powers of art and genuine kindness—and in the promise of new growth, even after devastation, even after everything has turned to ash.” —Boston Globe  
“If we know this story, we haven’t seen it yet in American fiction, not until now . . . This is, in the end, a novel about the burden of being the first of your kind—a burden you do not always survive.” —Alexander Chee, The New York Times Book Review  
“Tender and merciless all at once . . . Vital in all the essential ways.” —Jesmyn Ward, author of Sing, Unburied, Sing Celeste Ng is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere. Her third novel, Our Missing Hearts, will be published in October 2022. Ng is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and her work has been published in over thirty languages. US