Empire of Glass

Solimine’s debut novel, inspired by her mid-1990s teenage experience of living with a family in China, is a complex, lyrical, and unsparing revelation about the old and new China and the hardships faced by an ordinary Chinese couple who survived Mao’s cultural revolution. The story unfolds as a memoir left by wife and mother Li-Ming, given 20 years after her death to her American exchange student “daughter”—dubbed Lao K by Li-Ming’s family—who became part of the family and now has translated the account, which Li-Ming entitled Empire of Glass. Li-Ming describes the difficulties of growing up in the shadow of her politically shamed mother and the hardships her husband endured, first as an impoverished child selling rejected glass lenses ground by his tirelessly working father, then as a soldier in the Red Army. Lao K’s annotations clarify, expand, or comment on the narrative, occasionally including the poetry of Han-Shan, a Tang Dynasty Chinese poet whose work was forbidden during the cultural revolution. It’s not clear how much of what Li-Ming has written is true; she painted an evocative history while secreting away the knowledge that she was dying of cancer and was aware her words would be her legacy. It may fall to Lao K to help her in a way her own daughter and husband cannot. The author leaves us to consider the actions one can and cannot do out of pure love. (July)