Our Missing Hearts

​Author: Celeste Ng
Publisher: Abacus books
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
It was Lauren Beukes who first unpacked the word ‘dystopian’ for me following the release of her first book, Moxyland in 2008. As you know she’s stayed on that trail with a few more titles, and I’m still reeling from the latest, Afterland, described by some as feminist dystopia. But whilst I appreciate the creative foresight that goes into writing dystopia (imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically 

​one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic), I have to say that with the global here-and-now being so ghastly, dipping into the future to find worse, often leaves me depleted.
So on that basis, ‘Our Missing Hearts’ by Celeste Ng presented a bit of a challenge. Set in the US a decade or so into the future, the ‘authorities’ have declared PACT– Preserving American Culture and Traditions - to be the defining ethic, or law. They’ve also decreed that the offspring of anyone defying that law, are to be removed and relocated. Most especially children of PAO, People of Asian Origin (and don’t we know that when you become an acronym, you’ve pretty much lost the battle. Don’t we also know about racial bigotry and fear).
Having said all that, I found this to be a beautifully written book, something that kept me going when I felt I might be missing, or losing, the plot. What I did get though, loud and clear, was a reverence for folk tales and sharing them, the fragile value of libraries and the agony of a mother torn between her beliefs and caring for her child.
I wish I had read the Author’s Note before instead of after reading the book. It details how children have been used as pawns in discriminate thinking across the world and over generations. Amongst other things, it also explains the extraordinary guerrilla art protest that features here, but most importantly it reveals that this is not just futuristic fantasy – but a cautionary tale.
I haven’t read Celeste Ng’s other books, ‘Everything I Never Told You’ and ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ – but I believe they have had people talking, and thinking.