Quan Barry

I finished When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East almost a week ago, and it's been floating around in my mind as I try to understand everything I experienced through it. The short version of the novel is this: a group of five Mongolian Buddhist monks travel together across Mongolia visiting several children, any of whom might be the reincarnation of a revered lama. Two of those monks are identical twin brothers: Chuluun and Mun, who were brought to a monastery as children after Mun was show more recognized a reincarnated lama. Within the last year, Mun has abandoned the monastery, but he has agreed to join the monks on this journey at the urging of his brother.

Chuluum is the narrator here, and experiencing the world through his eyes is a deeply reflective experience. In addition, each of the characters is fascinating in their own right, giving the reader many ways of experiencing their journey—though their parts of the story aren't told in first person. This is a book that has to be moved through slowly: not because it drags, but more in the way that one slowly consumes a rich, delicious dinner. Any sense of rush will make the richness harder to enjoy.

When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East is a rewarding read for anyone who likes books that move beyond the expected.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher; the opinions are my own. show less

I can’t say that I totally enjoyed We Ride upon Sicks by Quan Barry. It had some funny moments but I also found my attention wandering from the book quite a lot. Set in 1989, Danvers, Massachusetts, a high school field hockey team discovers that witchcraft, 300 years after being practised by their ancestors, may be the key to a winning season.

By pledging a vow to a picture of Emilio Estevez, writing their name in a spiral notebook and tying a piece of an old blue sports sock around their show more arm, their team performance is improved. Wining games gives the team license to follow up on some of their devilish impulses and soon they are creating mayhem around Danvers. The book examines their complex relationships as well as race, identity, family and friendship.

We Ride Upon Sticks brings back memories of the 1980s, an era that has no particular appeal for me. The author obviously delighted in allowing these team-mates to learn to become their true selves. show less

Striker is on a small, very expensive cruise to Antarctica to scout for film locations for biopic about Earnest Shackleton. She doesn't like her fellow passengers, whom she prefers to label with nicknames, and she avoids them as much as she can, from the creepy kid of the divorced gay guys, here with their new partners, to the elderly billionaire and his younger wife. But on a kayak outing to an island, something odd happens and Striker returns to herself to find herself alone in her kayak show more surrounded only by water. Eventually, she and the surviving members of the outing end up on a desolate volcanic island where the shelter was once inhabited by desperate, shipwrecked men. Striker has visions of what happened in that small cabin, and she's not sure that she can trust any of her fellow survivors. Then things get weirder.

This is horror and Striker may be an unreliable narrator. Even if everything she says is true, she's also taking medication usually prescribed for a mental illness and some other person takes over her body in stressful situations and she has no memory of what happened, although she is the one to deal with the repercussions. The idea of a story told from the point of view of someone with multiple personalities is very interesting, but in a horror story, one that depends on rising tension, having the narrator and the character through whom we are witnessing the story of these people stuck on an isolated island with a gruesome history, and missing all of the most dramatic moments is anti-climatic. And when Striker remained around to witness the horror and to discover what happened previously, the story would cut away to talk about Striker's childhood. The childhood parts were well-done and important, but they took away any remaining tension as to the horror unfolding. And with so many plots going, none was given the space it needed to breathe. Quan Barry is an excellent writer with so many great ideas that I'll happily pick up her next book, but this one, despite all the elements being good, worked less well as a whole than it should have. show less

A marvelous and rewarding read! Barry evidently is deeply engaged in Buddhist thought and practice as well as having an (understandable!) geographical love affair with Mongolia. A quest tale, the search for a new reincarnated being, a tulku, known as the One For Whom the Sky Never Darkens. The narrator is Chuluun, a young monk on the verge of taking his final vows and the group that goes on the search has two other 'tulku' although one, Chuluun's twin, Mun, who had also been named as the show more Redeemer Who Sounds the Conch in the Darkness has taken his vows as a child (without much choice) but walked out later, as a young adult. The story alternates with ease between their story, to the history of Buddhism in Mongolia, and to Chuluun's internal struggle about whether he will not take his final vows and will leave. So it is a quest story, a journey story, complex and beautifully put together and written. ***** show less