The Middle Kingdom (Paperback)

Andrea Barrett is best known for her novel The Voyage of The Narwhal and a collection of short stories, Ship Fever. In both these books scientific discovery, history and the natural world are wonderful backdrops to intimate, personal dramas. The Middle Kingdom is an earlier work but the same keen sense of curiosity about life and the way to live it glimmers on the page.

The novel opens in the recent past, in Tiananmen Square. There is smoke, gunfire and confusion, a sense of history being destroyed and re-made into something else. In the midst of this historical shattering, is a character study of an American woman teaching natural history in a Chinese laboratory. Grace Hoffmeier's story starts off "stunted and stilted, common and sad", but by the end of the novel she has found the "middle way--not too much looking back. Not too much dreaming ahead".

Grace's is an American tale, one of stifling family conflicts; and two bad marriages that look like escape routes, but are just another way of being trapped. Grace overeats to compensate for all her mistakes, to swaddle her desires, to stop herself thinking: "that was how I existed then: push, shut, close, seal, deny, forget". But on a trip to China, with her husband Walter, a meeting at a scientific conference forces her to reassesses her past and take control of her future. Andrea Barrett's prose is lyrical and sure, blending fact with fiction in an elegant meditation on personal freedom and political repression. Grace's story is shadowed by real events in China, giving her voyage of discovery an extraordinary vividness and subtlety. Barrett is unsentimental about country and person and the novel is all the more engaging for of it. --Eithne Farry

'An exhilarating book... wonderful and generous insights... Ms Barrett has captured a truly authentic Beijing.' Amy Tan 'The Middle Kingdom is engaging. Andrea Barrett writes with felicity, intelligence and humour.' Washington Post 'With The Middle Kingdom, Andrea Barrett further consolidates her position as one of our most thoughtful chroniclers of contemporary life... The Middle Kingdom is another impressive milestone in what promises to be a long and fruitful literary journey by an accomplished American author.' Cleveland Plain Dealer 'Andrea Barrett does not flinch from large subjects, yet her uncanny investigations into human curiosity are sensual and soul-enhancing, and always underlit by splendid intelligence.' Howard Norman, author of The Bird Artist 'Her work stands out for its intelligence... the overall effect is quietly dazzling.' New York Times

It sounds like the title for a Tolkien trilogy and in many ways the alien landscape we are plunged into from the start could as easily be inhabited by dwarves and elves as human beings. From the first page we are tossed and turned on an emotional as well as a political roller coaster as the Tiananmen Square massacres kick off right in front of our heroine's eyes. But we are yet to find out why an American woman in her 30s with a small child should be in the thick of this turmoil. The tension that grips this book from the outset is heightened further when we learn of the straightjacketed relationship that the American woman is trying to break free from. Soon we are aware that the mysteries surrounding Grace Hoffmeier run far deeper than the question of how she came to be in China at this time. The Chinese students and colleagues on the campus of the university at which Grace is a professor's assistant accept her son, Jody, with incredible ease. He even speaks Mandarin. It soon becomes apparent that this is more than just a story; it is a journey into our own prejudices and Grace's - a journey to a place way outside our comfort zone. Andrea Bassett writes in an easy, open way that immediately endears and creates a sense of warmth and trustworthiness. Her characters are all too real, endowed with all the charms and flaws we recognize. In this sense, Barrett breaks down the cultural barriers beautifully and reduces her story to a very human core. However, there are some sharp 'wake-up calls' that send events spiralling out of control and create an ironic image of our own assumptions. Above all, through Grace, we learn to fall in love with China, as Barrett has so obviously done. Often gritty, always entertaining and propelled by its own momentum, this book tackles frighteningly large subjects in an honest and sensitive manner. (Kirkus UK)

Every bit as bright as Lucid Stars (1988) and far more resonant than Secret Harmonies (1989), Barrett's third novel offers an absorbing and complex portrait of a confused young woman who chances upon the answers to all of her unasked questions when she takes a trip to China. Grace Hoffmeier has accompanied her husband Walter, a lake ecologist of some renown, to Beijing to attend a conference on the effects of acid rain. Once a promising ecologist herself, Grace has abandoned her studies, gained 30 pounds, and now feels very much relegated to the role of professor's wife. In Beijing, she chafes at the restrictions imposed on her group - there is no chance for contact with the real China - and, as soon as she has the opportunity, she slips off to have dinner at the home of a Chinese scientist she has met. As it turns out, Grace's night with this family - Yu Xiaomin, husband Meng, and son Zaofan - will change the course of her life forever. Author Barrett spins Grace's story backwards, as one flashback leads to another. This can be a risky device, but here it works naturally, even powerfully, as Grace narrates the episodes of her life. Her voice is matter-of-fact, but her visions are not. There seems to be something mystical always hovering just beyond Grace's eyesight - something that speaks to her just out of earshot. She isn't aware of these things exactly, and that gives her story a compelling edge. In China, then, what Grace finds is something more than simple answers about love and life - it is the power to see and hear what she's been missing all along. Evocative, funny, and just mysterious enough: Barrett's best yet. (Kirkus Reviews)