All That Matters - Softcover

Choy, Wayson

3.91

1,236 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1590512154 ISBN 13: 9781590512159

Publisher: Other Press, 2007

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"A new book from Choy is an event. His writing has a quiet integrity and an exquisite grace."—Maclean's

Winner of the 2005 Trillium Book Award, finalist for the 2004 Giller Prize, and long-listed for the 2006 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, All That Matters is the eagerly anticipated sequel to Wayson Choy's award-winning first novel, The Jade Peony.Kiam-Kim is three years old when he arrives by ship at Gold Mountain with his father and his grandmother, Poh-Poh. From his earliest years, Kiam-Kim is deeply conscious of his responsibility to maintain the family's honor and to set an example for his younger siblings. However, his life is increasingly complicated by his burgeoning awareness of the world outside Vancouver's Chinatown. Choy once again accomplishes the extraordinary: blending a haunting evocation of tenacious, ancient traditions with a precise, funny, and very modern coming-of-age story.

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From the Inside Flap:

From Wayson Choy comes All That Matters, the long-awaited sequel to the bestselling and award-winning The Jade Peony.

The Master said: "In words, all that matters is to express truth." -- The Analects of Confucius

Set in Vancouver's Chinatown in the 1930s and 1940s, Choy continues the story of the Chen family household, this time narrated by First Son, Kiam-Kim. We first meet Kiam-Kim at the age of eight, staring at the yellowed photograph of his mother, who died in China when he was just a baby. Kiam-Kim, Poh-Poh (his larger-than-life grandmother) and Mr. Chen, his demure and honest father, journey to a new life in Vancouver's Old Chinatown. Following the dream of finding gold and then one day returning to China -- wealthy -- they, like many Chinese families around them, find themselves in a country on the brink of the Second World War, struggling to survive in a foreign land and keep alive the traditions of an older world.

Finely-crafted and rich in historical detail, All That Matters depicts 1930s Vancouver in the haunting hues of memory, and sees in the Chen family a fragile miniature of a larger world. Dwelling on Kiam-Kim's sense of responsibility to his community, Choy unfolds the Chen family's secrets in thoughtful and luminous prose, leading the reader to a breathtaking conclusion that far transcends the limits of its time and place, and gestures towards all humanity.

From the Back Cover:

Praise for The Jade Peony and Paper Shadows:
"Rich . . . delightful . . . Choy ranges over this familiar territory with a fresh eye."
--New York Times Book Review

"A sweet and funny novel . . . beautifully written. . . . It renders a complex and complete human world, which by the end of two-hundred-odd pages we have learned to love."
--The Boston Book Review

"This is a haunted memoir, full of phantoms and secrets, but it is also full of rich historical detail and sharp, clear descriptions of daily life. . . . The unknown is always an alluring prospect, but this book suggests that what counts in the end is a more ordinary reality, the patience and forgiveness and sense of responsibility that make daily family life possible. . . . In the era of the talk-show memoir, in which telling it all passes for telling it well, Paper Shadows stands out as a thoughtful, luminous and finely crafted work."
--The Globe and Mail

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