Little Gods
Read Little Gods! It’s brilliant and expansive; a story of migration, family, and the limits and possibilities of time. Jin’s characters are unforgettable. The places in the novel are loud—they get in your face, your eyes, your ears. I cannot wait to read more of her work!
Su Lan—brilliant physicist, reluctant mother, capricious friend—is the nexus of the story, but we only learn about her through the other characters in the novel. She remains a mystery, known through the projections of her daughter, husband, and friends.
The novel is obsessed with time and the past; some characters race to escape or erase their history while others struggle to find it, all set against the backdrop of unstoppable change as the city of Shanghai rebuilds itself. I loved the collision between big historical narratives and intimate personal stories.
Jin so thoroughly questions the concept of the self in this novel, leaving me with so many things to ponder. Is the ‘true self’ static? What is the difference between the real self and the created self? Are they distinct? In a narrative that spans two generations, Little Gods asks more questions than it answers, making it the perfect book for me :)
