Author: Sam Meekings

Title: Under Fishbone Clouds

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press

She's the well-educated daughter of dumpling dynasty; he's an illiterate runaway who works in the family restaurant. They meet for the first time at their wedding, a union arranged by her father. Their story is told by the Kitchen God, who follows the couple in an attempt to understand the workings of the human heart—something he needs to do to win a bet with the Jade Emperor.

If that sounds complicated, you ain't seen nothing yet. Under Fishbone Clouds is billed as "a universal love story, a family saga, and a journey through Chinese history, myth, and culture." That's an accurate summation. Unfortunately, I also found it to be four hundred-plus pages of grim reading.

To be fair, how could a novel set in Mao's Cultural Revolution be otherwise? It was a grim time. Added to the famous Chinese inscrutability—"Yuying, as she had been taught to do since birth, showed no emotion…"—it makes for a love story where people are afraid to feel, much less express, their emotions. Given all that, it's amazing their relationship survives as well as it does.

The story of Yuying and her husband, Hou Jinyi, is punctuated with histories of various minor Chinese deities. It appears the way to immortality is to love someone fiercely—unfortunately, this never ends well, and their eternal home is far from heavenly.

No wonder the "real" people in the book are all emotional cripples. Despite these handicaps, the couple survives through bad times and worse (there are no good times in this story). As the Kitchen God says, "it seemed that whatever was thrown at it, the heart carried on."

Was it Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club that began the current trend in oriental fiction? I've read a number of books featuring characters from China (and occasionally Japan) since that one came out years ago.

 I'm afraid I enjoyed most of them more than I did Under Fishbone Clouds. The Kitchen God's storytelling style is a little scattered for my taste, and there's a limit to how many stories of love gone horribly wrong I can stomach at one sitting.

There's no denying Meeking's skill as an author. His characters are fully realized, even the minor ones. It's an impressive work, especially for a first novel. As a history—the novel spans the years from 1946 to 2000—it's educational in a depressing sort of way. To be fair, I read it during the Christmas season, so the contrast between a time of light and hope and the story of a dark time when hope was forbidden was all the greater.

It's entirely possible that affected my reaction; other reviewers have been darn near poetic in their praise. So take all of the above as one woman's opinion and don't be afraid to give Under Fishbone Clouds a chance. Just don't expect it to be light reading.

*This Review First Published 1/3/2011