About this item
Highlights
- In this dazzling debut novel, a hidden and nearly forgotten magic--of Reforging pencils, bringing the memories they contain back to life--holds the power to transform a young woman's relationship with her grandmother, and to mend long-lost connections across time and space.Monica Tsai spends most days on her computer, journaling the details of her ordinary life and coding for a program that seeks to connect strangers online.
- Author(s): Allison King
- 368 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
Book Synopsis
In this dazzling debut novel, a hidden and nearly forgotten magic--of Reforging pencils, bringing the memories they contain back to life--holds the power to transform a young woman's relationship with her grandmother, and to mend long-lost connections across time and space.
Monica Tsai spends most days on her computer, journaling the details of her ordinary life and coding for a program that seeks to connect strangers online. A self-proclaimed recluse, she's always struggled to make friends and, as a college freshman, finds herself escaping into a digital world, counting the days until she can return home to her beloved grandparents. They are now in their nineties, and Monica worries about them constantly--especially her grandmother, Yun, who survived two wars in China before coming to the States, and whose memory has begun to fade.
Though Yun rarely speaks of her past, Monica is determined to find the long-lost cousin she was separated from years ago. One day, the very program Monica is helping to build connects her to a young woman, whose gift of a single pencil holds a surprising clue. Monica's discovery of a hidden family history is exquisitely braided with Yun's own memories as she writes of her years in Shanghai, working at the Phoenix Pencil Company. As WWII rages outside their door, Yun and her cousin, Meng, learn of a special power the women in their family possess: the ability to Reforge a pencil's words. But when the government uncovers their secret, they are forced into a life of espionage, betraying other people's stories to survive.
Combining the cross-generational family saga and epistolary form of A Tale for the Time Being with the uplifting, emotional magic of The Midnight Library, Allison King's stunning debut novel asks: who owns and inherits our stories? The answers and secrets that surface on the page may have the unerasable power to reconnect a family and restore a legacy.
Review Quotes
"I loved this wildly inventive novel and its exploration of how technology and humanity can intersect in deeply meaningful ways. Allison King is a talent to watch." -- Liz Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The God of the Woods
"Remarkable. . . Part speculative, part multigenerational family epic, part historical record, part coming-of-age romance, it is, like the mythical titular phoenix, all magic. . . .King radiantly explores memory, storytelling, archiving, history, and the subjective unreliability of all that we think we know." -- Booklist (starred review)
"Powerful . . . a poignant magical realist tale that's sure to find fans." -- Publishers Weekly
"China, America, generations, and stories connect with literal magic in this suspenseful debut. Marvelous!" -- Gish Jen, award-winning author of The Resisters
"A beautiful ode to the warmth of family connection, the power of memory, and the magic of the written word." -- Ray Nayler, award-winning author of The Mountain in the Sea
"The Phoenix Pencil Company is a masterful blending of history, fantasy, and romance that sank into my heart the way the magic of its pencils sinks into veins. King has written a stunning debut that pulses with love and loss, regret and forgiveness, and above all, the undeniable, painful, joyful pull of human connection. This book had me smiling through my tears." -- Fonda Lee, author of the Green Bone Saga
"Like the emotion infused graphite hearts of the pencils in this tender novel, King has delivered an impressive juggling act of voices that made me feel like I was in on a secret--not merely hearing about familial connection, regret, betrayal, and finding the truth of one's own story, but feeling these lives traveling within my veins. The Phoenix Pencil Company is a rare novel that unpacks the integrity and modes of how we form connections, both through graphite and magic and through digital highways, ultimately asking the question of what really matters when it comes to the people we love." -- Sequoia Nagamatsu, bestselling author of How High We Go in the Dark