A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories | Yiyun Li

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories | Yiyun Li | Great Read

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A Thousand Years o...

	A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories Yiyun Li Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 18 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Great Read

This is a stunning debut by a very talented young writer- I have bought multiple copies as gifts and cannot wait to see what she does next!

Great Read

A great book by a young and upcoming writer. Great stories that people can relate to.

A Fine Short Story Collection from a Promising Writer

In the title story of this engaging short story collection by Yiyun Li, Mr. Shi comes to a Midwestern American town from China to visit his estranged and recently divorced daughter. In a local park, he meets and befriends an elderly Iranian woman whom he calls Madam, even though neither speak much English and they can hardly understand one another's speech. "That we get to meet and talk to each other...must have taken a long time of good prayers to get us here," he explains an old proverb to her in Chinese. "It takes three thousand years of prayers to place your head side by side with your loved one's on the pillow. For father and daughter? A thousand years, maybe." As Mr. Shi's story unfolds, we learn that he must have fallen well short of a thousand years, and that, in fact, most of his life as a rocket scientist has been a lie.

A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS is filled with tales of family conflict and intergenerational relationships, stories of tragic ancestors, divorced and suicidal parents, adopted children, gay sons, unfaithful spouses, jilted lovers, unborn babies, and loveless marriages. Ms. Li's China is an unhappy place where families struggle to survive, accepting their fate and just trying to get by until their life's sentence on Earth has been served. Happiness is mostly transitory, inevitably followed by a return to the harsh punishments of reality. Li's America is little better, a place where people may live more comfortably but still fail to connect in meaningful ways. In her world, no one seems to have amassed enough good prayers.

In her opening story, "After," Ms. Li presents the late-in-life story of Granny Lin, a spinster who is just leaving her bankrupt factory, carrying her "honorable retirement" certificate in her stainless steel lunch pail. She is persuaded to marry Old Tang, a 76-year-old Alzheimer's victim, but a tragic accident leads her to a maid's job in a boarding school for rich children where she unofficially adopts a young boy named Kang, her first and only true love. In the final scene, she is back on the street, jobless, her bag of clothing stolen, holding nothing more than her life's small fortune in her lunch pail.

Another story, "Immortality," ranges over the last century of Chinese history in the guise of a town whose claim to fame has been the main source of imperial eunuchs, ironically called "Great Papas." The imperial era has ended, but miraculously, a child has been born in the town (to a carpenter and his wife, no less) who is a virtual double of the (unnamed) "dictator," the country's new leader. It is impossible not to visualize a Mao look-alike here. The young man rises to national fame after the dictator's death, but a sexual misadventure (another irony) causes his downfall. In the final scene, we are left with the image of a crazed Mao look-alike who has castrated himself at his mother's tomb.

Most of Li's stories are conventional narratives, but one, "Persimmons," breaks modestly out of that mold. Told almost entirely through dialog, a group of villagers gradually reveal the tale of a young boy's drowning and his father's failed efforts to obtain justice that result in mass murder. The truth unfolds slowly, but the villagers' tones are fatalistic, as if no other outcome had ever been possible.

A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS presents an insightful look at life in China's present and recent past. Ms. Li proves herself an engaging and thoughtful storyteller with the welcomed promise of more to come.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4

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