The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King
Blurb:
In this dazzling debut novel, a hidden and nearly forgotten magic—of Reforging pencils, bringing the memories they contain back to life—holds the power to transform a young woman’s relationship with her grandmother, and to mend long-lost connections across time and space.
Monica Tsai spends most days on her computer, journaling the details of her ordinary life and coding for a program that seeks to connect strangers online. A self-proclaimed recluse, she's always struggled to make friends and, as a college freshman, finds herself escaping into a digital world, counting the days until she can return home to her beloved grandparents. They are now in their nineties, and Monica worries about them constantly—especially her grandmother, Yun, who survived two wars in China before coming to the States, and whose memory has begun to fade.
Though Yun rarely speaks of her past, Monica is determined to find the long-lost cousin she was separated from years ago. One day, the very program Monica is helping to build connects her to a young woman, whose gift of a single pencil holds a surprising clue. Monica’s discovery of a hidden family history is exquisitely braided with Yun’s own memories as she writes of her years in Shanghai, working at the Phoenix Pencil Company. As WWII rages outside their door, Yun and her cousin, Meng, learn of a special power the women in their family possess: the ability to Reforge a pencil’s words. But when the government uncovers their secret, they are forced into a life of espionage, betraying other people’s stories to survive.
Combining the cross-generational family saga and epistolary form of A Tale for the Time Being with the uplifting, emotional magic of The Midnight Library, Allison King’s stunning debut novel asks: who owns and inherits our stories? The answers and secrets that surface on the page may have the unerasable power to reconnect a family and restore a legacy.
Review:
Long time no see! I don’t even want to think about how long it's been since I’ve written a review, so I’m just going to conveniently ignore that in favor of getting right into The Phoenix Pencil Company, Allison King’s debut novel!
Now, when I saw this on NetGalley (thank you for the ARC, which I should have reviewed earlier), I was immediately hooked by the premise of this story. And let me tell you, King did a great job of keeping it that way.
We are presented with a dual narrative of sorts. There are two main POVs, Monica, and her grandmother Yun, who came to Cambridge many decades ago from Shanghai. Within Yun’s narrative are not quite interludes, but near enough to think of them that way, taking us all the way back to the time of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, and the great tides of change coming to Yun’s family shop, the Phoenix Pencil Company.
Monica is working with one of her professors on an algorithm that collects stories, so we as a people can catalog them, share them, and learn from them. Much like Yun’s pencils from a generation ago, that were used to carry messages in the graphite, bleeding out of the women’s arms and into their hearts. Somewhere along the way, working with this database, Monica catches a picture of Yun’s old cousin, whom she hadn’t seen in the many decades since fleeing China to Taiwan, and then Taiwan to the US. In this picture is a young woman of Monica’s age named Louise, and the two quickly meet, share their story, and get in touch.
After some time, it becomes apparent to Monica that, 1; Louise is more to her than just a friend, and 2; the Phoenix Pencil Company and Yun’s old family are not what they seem. From there, she has to figure out both.
This is not my target genre, so to speak. I don’t exactly read contemporary fiction, but I had this recommended to me after I greatly enjoyed Babel. While I can’t say the two books are a like for like match, there is a familiarity in both King’s and Kuang’s writing styles and characterizations that definitely made me understand where the recommendation came from.
There has been a significant amount of discourse regarding the “magic” employed in this story, namely, the bleeding of stories through ink into the bloodstream of these women’s arms. I, personally, do not understand the gripes with it. I think its creative, interesting, and well thought out. And besides, if there is going to be magic in a primary world setting, we NEED to employ some measure of suspension of disbelief.
I especially liked the narrative of Yun’s, as it drew me in more than Monica’s. While Monica does have real, first world problems that we feel for, Yun’s are much sharper, emotional, and force the reader to be far more sympathetic. Not to say I wasn’t for Monica, who is pretty much your run of the mill shut in and repressed romantic, so to speak, but Yun stole the show for me. But, at the same time, I’m quite sure that's how the book was intended to be consumed.
Now for the big thing; the ending. I WILL NOT spoil it here, but WILL talk about it a little, so feel free to skip this paragraph, because I think it's worth mentioning. Some people dislike endings like the Phoenix Pencil Company’s, namely, bittersweet ones. I am no such person. I like endings that leave me feeling discontent, make me think, and are, in a way, unhappy. I know not everyone does, but these are stories that feel the realest, that have the most emotional impact, in my opinion.
Really, the only thing I didn’t care for (which is high praise, because I usually don’t care for a lot of stuff), was the communication, or lack thereof, between Monica and her love interest. Because I don’t read romance often, I don’t know if this would be a miscommunication trope (I highly doubt it is, considering its likely just the relationship of two people that haven’t really dated for), but it did leave me frustrated at times. That's likely why I enjoyed the ending so much. Don’t know what I mean by that? THEN GO READ THE BOOK.
All in all, the Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King is an emotionally blistering debut that is certainly not lacking in ambition, and deserving of a read.
