A Review of Jen Sookfong Lee’s The Conjoined (ECW Press 2016).

[xiomara]

A Review of Jen Sookfong Lee’s The Conjoined (ECW Press 2016).
By Stephen Hong Sohn



I’m trying to catch up on some indie press offerings, especially some of them North of the Canadian border, and I had to pick up Jen Sookfong Lee’s The Conjoined (ECW Press 2016), which had an absolutely can’t-stop-reading plot. Let’s let Barnes & Noble help us out here:

“On a sunny May morning, social worker Jessica Campbell sorts through her mother’s belongings after her recent funeral. In the basement, she makes a shocking discovery — two dead girls curled into the bottom of her mother’s chest freezers. She remembers a pair of foster children who lived with the family in 1988: Casey and Jamie Cheng — troubled, beautiful, and wild teenaged sisters from Vancouver’s Chinatown. After six weeks, they disappeared; social workers, police officers, and Jessica herself assumed they had run away. As Jessica learns more about Casey, Jamie, and their troubled immigrant Chinese parents, she also unearths dark stories about Donna, whom she had always thought of as the perfect mother. The complicated truths she uncovers force her to take stock of own life. Moving between present and past, this riveting novel unflinchingly examines the myth of social heroism and traces the often-hidden fractures that divide our diverse cities.”

When I went over to B&N to extract this marketing description, I noticed that the novel had only received one review and gave the novel *gasp* one star! This reviewer noted that the novel was hard to follow and that the ending was a letdown, while also commenting on what the reviewer thought was an excessive use of profanity. In any case, I couldn’t disagree MORE. I was absolutely riveted by the premise: I wanted to know how the mystery would unfold. The shifting third person is necessary, as readers need more information that any one character possesses. If there is a minor quibble to be made, then it would come from the traditionalist mystery reader. I should now provide a spoiler warning at this point, so turn away now before I ruin some major things. So, as Jessica gets further and further into figuring out what might have happened to Casey and Jamie, it becomes evident that her mother harbored more secrets than Jessica was willing to admit. Here, Lee plays with the subjectivity of third person narration, as that specific entity cannot necessarily access Jessica’s unobstructed mind. If there is a version of an unreliable third, it seems that Lee has employed one here. As Jessica reveals more and more of her memories, her mother evidently harbored significant trauma due to a childhood event in which her fraternal twin had been killed. It is unclear whether or not Jessica’s mother (Donna) may have accidentally or willfully pushed her own brother to his death. Whatever the case, this moment also alters Donna’s relationship with her own mother. As Donna grows up with a shadow of guilt or shame or sense of responsibility toward what happened to her brother, she becomes a foster mother. Taking care of these kids helps Donna assuage her complicated feelings of the past until of course Casey and Jamie show up with all of their psychic and emotional baggage. The novel never conveys whether or not Donna might have killed them, but there is still a suspicion. But like any excellent noir, Lee is turning us elsewhere: to the urban inequalities of Vancouver, the flaws in the foster care system, the impossible expectations given to social workers to affect change. As with any great noir, the mystery cannot be solved because it exists in a larger system of interlocking social inequalities.

Buy the Book Here:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-conjoined-jen-sookfong-lee/1124569509

Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Nicholas Clark

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don't hesitate to contact us via email!

Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at sohnucr@gmail.com
Nicholas Clark, PhD Student in English, at nclar004@ucr.edu

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