In Lisa Ko's The Leavers, Deming Guo doesn't need any help to know where he came from. Born in the United States to Polly Guo, who had herself smuggled to America to escape a dead-end life in China, Deming was actually sent back to his mother's home village for a few years to live with his grandfather while Polly worked endlessly to try to make some headway on her debts to the loan sharks that got her to New York City in the first place. When we meet Deming, he's in elementary school, living with his mother, her boyfriend, the boyfriend's sister, and her son, Michael, who's about the same age as Deming himself. Then, suddenly, after Polly starts talking about maybe moving to Florida for a job in a restaurant instead of the crushing grind of the nail salon she's been working in for years, she disappears. Already economically strapped, Polly's boyfriend and his sister can't afford to keep Deming with them for long, and he's soon adopted by a pair of white upstate professors, where his new parents dub him "Daniel", ostensibly to help him get along easier in the overwhelmingly white town he finds himself in.

We next catch up with Daniel in his early 20s, back in NYC and doing musician gigs after he dropped out of college because of an online poker problem. He's crashing with his bandmate, Roland, the only other person of color that he went to school with, and trying to figure out how to avoid going back to school like his parents want him to. He's never found out what happened to his mother, but after a chance reconnection with Michael, his curiosity is reawakened. As he starts to pursue the issue, the perspective changes and we get Polly's story...how and why she came to have Deming, how and why she came to America, and what actually did happen when she disappeared.

I never DNF (do not finish) books, but if I did, I would have dropped this one after about the first 50 or so pages. While the way his childhood played out would give anyone emotional scars, Daniel himself is not an enjoyable character to spend time with. He's whiny, he steals money from his friends, he's a coward. I really did not enjoy reading about him. But when the story switched to his mother, the book took off. Polly is a dynamic, interesting character who practically springs off the page, and her story is easy to get emotionally invested in. I wish Ko had either started with more of Polly or just made her the primary focus of the book overall...starting with Daniel seems like asking to lose a decent chunk of your audience straight out the gate.

And to miss this book entirely would be a shame. Although it's uneven, there's really solid stuff here. Like I said, Polly's story is a great one: she's a fantastic character and her struggles to make it are compelling. Ko also had me cringing in recognition at the way she painted Daniel's adoptive parents and their friends, who adopted a baby girl from China...the self-satisfied pats on their own backs for helping their children "connect with their culture" through food and dance classes, the way Deming is renamed like he's a puppy they picked up at the pound instead of a person. By the end, Ko has developed Daniel into a more understandable character and I came around to appreciating the book, but it really makes you slog through some bad (not even just like challenging, but bad) content to get there. ( )

Dening Guo’s mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon and never comes home. This is the story of her 11 year old son who is left bereft and her story on what happened. ( )

What a beautifully written story! I had a little trouble getting into the book at the beginning, and I found that some thoughts and dialog attributed to one of the main characters, Deming Guo, when he was still a child were too adult for a child, and therefore, unbelievable, but once the book moved past his childhood, and particularly when the story was being told from the perspective of his mother, Polly (Peilin) Guo, the story was magnificent. ( )

Switching between the POV of Deming (Daniel) a young Chinese American boy suddenly abandoned by his mother at age 11 and eventually adopted by a family in upstate New York and his Chinese mother Polly (Peilan) who made many difficult choices in her life, many that she regretted. The novel puts us inside the heads of the main characters and helps the reader experience their situations and their feeling of never quite belonging.

I like a book that helps me understand the unfamiliar and this story touches on a lot of unfamiliar things: Adoption, immigration, illegal status, non-traditional families. A good glimpse, I think, into a very different American experience and one that feels especially important in today's political climate.

Thumbs up. ( )

This is a quietly powerful book about identity and acceptance. At first, I struggled a bit to get into this. The pace is fairly slow and I was probably not in the right frame of mind to fully appreciate the depth of this book when I started it. I debated with myself whether I should just DNF, but then felt drawn back into the story and I am truly glad I stuck with it until the end.

I can in all honesty say that for most (if not all) the book, I profoundly disliked Deming/Daniel. He is a difficult character to accept, but at the same time he is a difficult character to relate to, in light of his experiences and profound suffering. Moving along with him, it slowly becomes clearer and clearer that Deming is essentially a lost child, suffering the loss of his mother and of his own identity. No matter how many years have passed, he cannot accept his situation, but even more so, he cannot accept this new persona that was imposed on him by his adoptive parents.

Polly's disappearance hangs as a permanent shadow of Deming's life, hurtful as it is incomprehensible. When we readers, are finally made aware of the truth behind it, it is tinted with the quiet pain of those who are used to seeing things go differently from what they had hoped. Through the struggle and long-lasting pain of Polly and Deming, this book provides a striking commentary of modern society, and the human impact of immigration and integration policies.

Extremely delicate in its weaving of the tale and in its social commentary, The Leavers brings to light the reality of what it means to be foreign, to be different in a society that values appearance and homogeneity above all else; it explores the struggle to rebuild your life from scratch without losing sight of where you come from and who you are; and above all else, it doesn't shy away from the pain and suffering of losing those dearest to you and what it means to never lose hope.

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way. ( )