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Nights When Nothing Happened
Nights When Nothing Happened | Simon Han
7 posts | 3 read | 5 to read
"From the outside, the Chengs seem like poster children for the enduring promise of the American Dream. Once Patty landed a tech job near Dallas, she and Liang grew secure enough to have a second child, and to send for their first from his grandparents back in China. Isn't this what they sacrificed so much for, to be a family? But then little Annabel begins to sleepwalk at night, putting in motion a string of misunderstandings that strips away their façade of suburban normalcy, threatening to set the community against them and turn their dream into tragedy. As the Chengs come undone, they are forced to confront the hidden pain and secret yearnings that have made them fear not only the world outside but one another. How can a man make peace with the terrors of his past? How can a child regain trust in unconditional love? How can a family stop burying its history and forge a way through it, to a more honest intimacy? Set during the early aughts, Nights When Nothing Happened is gripping storytelling immersed in the cross-currents that have reshaped the American landscape, from a prodigious new literary talent"--
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Bertha_Mason

"The temperature outside was the same as it had been inside. The air felt recycled, as if she were stepping out of a store and into a mall, from one contained space to a larger contained space. Inside this outside, the sun had come down."

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Bertha_Mason

"He watched Marcy watch him. There was no way to get out of Marcy‘s crosshairs. She seemed to have the power to look at his big toe and make it wiggle."

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Bertha_Mason

"Were they saving the clothes for another baby? No, no. They were keeping them, like how LÇŽolao and LÇŽoye kept his mother‘s school acceptances, or that letter from Nankai University‘s president congratulating her for placing at the top of her class. In America everything was an accomplishment, even growing out of baby clothes."

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Bertha_Mason

"Annabel thrust a finger at Jack, with an intensity that dented the air."

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Bertha_Mason

"It had been a long fall, made worse by the general feeling that fall had not ended, and the holidays were an illusion."

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Bertha_Mason

"He opened up and gathered Liang in his arms, cradling him as if a head or leg might topple to the ground."

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Bertha_Mason

"His mother had a hand draped over his father‘s chest, and her face pressed against his. She looked as if she were sniffing up the loose wax from his ear." ?