Cocoon by Zhang Yueran

This is a slow moving moody book that I am not sure I got everything about it. I saw on my nephew's reading list and decided to read it. The book is written by a young Chinese author and it reflects on the history of China in the second half of the 20th century, and so in that way is maybe a window into how that might be viewed or thought of by those who did not live through it, but whose parents and grandparents would have. Li Jiaqi and Cheng Gong grew up in very dysfunctional families and this is a main theme of the book. The book opens with the two childhood friends reuniting in their 20s, and is told from their alternate perspectives, chapters seesawing between the accounts told by each, as they tell the story of growing up from their perspectives, filling in gaps in each other’s knowledge to the point where it was hard to keep the two stories straight, they were so similar and overlapping. At the center of the story is how does the lack of a respectable father, a respected mother, loving grandparents and aunts and uncles, affect a child and how does that shape their lives as young adults. Their two stories lead each other and the reader towards the truth of a crime that occurred in their family before their time. It shows how targeting one man at that time triggered the cycle of dysfunction and destruction that shaped families for generations. The author does this not only through the actions of the various characters and the inability of any family member to escape this cycle, but also through the gloomy, pessimistic atmosphere that pervades the book. It is a hard read, but maybe one that can shed some inside light upon what is happening for people in modern China.