Memory Piece

October 1, 2023

Following Ko's National Book Award finalist, PEN/Bellwether--winning The Leavers, Memory Piece visits teenagers Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng in the early 1980s, then revisits them as adults, when performance activist Giselle, coder Jackie, and community activist Ellen find their dreams getting bent. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 27, 2023
Ko (The Leavers) spans past, present, and future with the astute story of three Chinese American women from the New York City tristate area over the course of their lives. As a teen in 1980s suburbia, Giselle Chin knows she wants to be an artist, and that her performance art will provide “a container for the uncertainty and overwhelm of the future.” At Chinese language school, she meets Jackie Ong, who’s drawn to computers and feels “more kinship to machines” than people. At a party, the two encounter Ellen Ng, who later gets involved in political activism and moves to a community squat in New York City called Sola. As Giselle gains fame in the art world, she wonders whether celebrity will compromise her true vision, and if so, which one she’ll have to abandon. Jackie, too, must decide what really matters to her as she attempts to balance integrity and success while creating an online social network just as the internet begins to take off, and Ellen worries Sola will be undone by gentrification. For much of the narrative, the women’s individual story lines feel a bit disjointed, but Ko brings them together in a satisfying final act in the 2040s, when America is an authoritarian police state. This is a worthy follow-up to Ko’s striking debut. Agent: Ayesha Pande, Pande Literary.

February 15, 2024
Bored and alone, three Asian American girls stumble upon one other at a Fourth of July barbecue in 1983. As the world proves tough and overbearing, their paths continue to intersect in brief but unforgettable moments. The award-winning author of The Leavers (2017) takes readers through the 1980s to the 2040s in New York, often interweaving art and technology. The first part of the book centers on Giselle Chin, a performance artist who struggles with the harsh expectations of the greater art world as she gains recognition. Then there's the sharp and charismatic Jackie Ong, a pioneer of the dot-com era--until she discovers the dark side of monetization and data collection. Meanwhile, Ellen Ng starts a squat in her community to fight gentrification and policing. But in a bleak future, she wonders if her efforts even matter. The novel serves as an archive of our past and a vision for what's to come, hauntingly beautiful in a way that's both nostalgic and dystopian. In essence, Memory Piece is about the power of remembering, especially when it's painful.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from January 15, 2024
Three girls walk into a bedroom in the New Jersey suburbs in 1983...and many decades later, into a dystopian future. Soon-to-be seventh graders Giselle Chin and Jackie Ong are hiding from a Fourth of July party, making prank calls in the host's bedroom, when Ellen Ng walks in and asks if there's anything else to do for fun around here. The three wander across the street into a parallel gathering and help themselves to someone else's hamburgers. "This was the beginning, what Giselle would describe, years later...as...the SEEDS of our aesthetics...we saw each other for who we were // masked weirdos, undercover pranksters." This ominously pretentious-sounding observation appears in one of the year-long conceptual artworks Giselle eventually becomes famous for: Mall Piece, 1995-96; Memory Piece, 1996-97; and Death Piece, 1999-2000. Meanwhile, Jackie grows up to be a visionary software developer, creating a site where people keep online diaries for public consumption and taking part in New York City's Silicon Alley dot-com boom. Ellen continues her rabble-rousing ways, publishing a zine and then establishing a squat on the Lower East Side. Though they lose track of each other from time to time, the three come to realize that "friendships were circular, that you could never fully lose touch." After moving their stories across the bridge to the new millennium, the narrative leaps ahead to the 2040s, where the political situation has become a nightmare, though not a particularly intriguing one, and supporting characters proliferate while ones we care about fade from view. Though full of interesting action and sharp observation, Ko's follow-up to The Leavers (2017) fails to whip up much narrative tension beyond the mystery created by the photographs that appear from time to time, captioned with complicated archival labels. In the end, the book's elaborate conceptual structure dominates the characters who inhabit it. A socially conscious novel of art and ideas.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 29, 2024

Ko focuses on three friends who met in the 1980s as part of a network of Asian American families. Raised in New Jersey, Giselle eventually finds international success as a performance artist. Jackie, a computer wiz, enters the dot-com world, makes a fortune, and ends up disenchanted. In her role as a community activist and publisher of zines, Ellen organizes the takeover and rehabilitation of an empty building on the Lower East Side. The novel moves from the 1980s through the early 2000s to a dystopian police state in 2040, which limits access to food, housing, and travel. Throughout the decades, the three women's enduring friendship sustains them as they deal with familial expectations and the pressures of negotiating careers, romantic relationships, and the social and political upheaval around them. Some readers might find that the sections appear disjointed, and historical background occasionally overwhelms the narrative. VERDICT Ko, whose debut novel, The Leavers, was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award, contextualizes her characters' lives in relation to major social and historical events over the decades. This is an ambitious and serious novel.--Jacqueline Snider

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.