Where Waters Meet by Zhang Ling is the author’s ninth novel, but her first in English, and it’s masterful. Phoenix and George meet when she takes her mother, Rain, in for a hearing screening. Following her mother’s death, Phoenix travels back to China, to her Auntie Mei, where they unravel her mother’s history.
Beautifully written and artfully complex, Where Waters Meet is told in reverse order—readers meet Rain at the end of her life and travel backward, as Phoenix does, learning more about Rain’s early life. The narrative never stumbles over itself, but grows richer as Phoenix and the reader learn more.
A powerful narrative from a stark period of history, Ling writes vividly of the mother-daughter bond, as well as dealing with a mother’s inevitable decline and loss. Most especially, Ling explores not understanding our mothers and their history before they became “mom.” She writes of the brutality we share and what we keep hidden, and the extremes mothers will go to for their children.
“Story alters geography,” as Rain notes in her story, and Phoenix will never see her homeland or her mother in quite the same way again.