I chose The Moon Represents My Heart by Pim Wangtechawat (Jonathan Ball Publishers) due to my enduring fascination with the subject of time travel, an interest ignited by Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife back in 2003.
The Moon Represents My Heart, on the cusp of being adapted into a Netflix series, traces the journey of the Wangs, a Chinese British family endowed with the extraordinary ability to navigate through time.
When parents Joshua and Lily depart for the past and never return, their children, Tommy and Eva, are forced to live with their grandmother and to deal with their grief alone. While Eva tries to find her place in the present and later moves to Hong Kong to be closer to their extended family who remained there, Tommy, on the other hand, ventures further and further into the past, seeking his parents and a connection to his family’s history.
As his affection blossoms for a woman hailing from the 1930s London Chinatown during one of his temporal excursions, Tommy’s forays into the past intensify. In this progression, a noticeable shift occurs as he gradually distances himself from the present, growing estranged from his sister and gradually disconnecting from those who hold him dear.
Even though Joshua, the father, ostensibly explores history and the complexities of time travel, the actual mechanisms behind these temporal journeys remain hazy within the narrative. As a reader, this lack of clarity prevented me from fully engaging in the journey, leaving me somewhat disconnected and, as a result, not entirely invested in the unfolding story.
The narrative covers several timelines, from the 1930s to the early 2000s, with several detours to other time periods in between. While the family's ability to traverse time zones and boundaries lies at the heart of the novel, it might be most fitting to interpret this element as a metaphor for the grief of a displaced family and their quest to discover a sense of belonging.
The Moon Represents My Heart is a poignant tale of loss and the feeling of being disconnected, yet ultimately, it left me somewhat unfulfilled.
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