In my opinion, it was the simplicity of his first novel, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, (along with the beautiful writing), that made it so special, and that was lacking in this novel. During her struggle, she must come face to face with her past. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, Christine is fighting her own personal battle, with her mother and Paul. Yet the laws in China don't work the way they do in the western world and thing run amuck, putting Yin-Yin's life in serious danger. He and Yin-Yin then decide to try and fight the Chinese government and get justice for her family. He therefore takes it upon himself to do some digging, and he discovers that Min Fang and several others in her village ate fish from a contaminated lake and were unknowingly poisoned. Paul, a former journalist, finds that her symptoms trigger memories of story that he investigated long ago - of people who got sick in a village due to a company dumping chemicals into a lake and who were victims of mercury poisoning. Scared to travel alone, she enlists the help of her beloved, Paul and together, they travel to meet her brother and his two children: his daughter Yin-Yin and son Xiau Hu and find that her brother’s wife Min Fang is bed ridden, lame and mute from what has been misdiagnosed as a stroke. In need of help, he summons her to China. Unbeknownst to her, her older brother Da Long (who she thought had passed away,) has been living in China all of these years. The first is Paul, a lonely westerner, who lives in Hong Kong and has previously lost everything, until he meets Christine, a Chinese woman, with whom he finds love and who makes him care about living again.Īs a young girl, Christine and her mother fled China to the safety of Hong Kong, where they have remained. The Language of Solitude is a beautifully written novel about the intersecting lives of several individuals.

Because I know he has it to give – I witnessed it in his first novel, the Art of Hearing Heartbeats, and I know he is capable. And it is because of this that I truly wanted to love this story. He writes about characters whose lives you want to care deeply about. Jan-Philipp Sendker has a way with words.

Dragon Games by November Sweets