Review by Frank Plowright

Ruth has grown up in Toronto, but her parents decide to move back to Hong Kong as her father has been offered a new job. While her brother will remain at boarding school in Canada, Ruth will be leaving everything behind for a country she’s never visited, although has a head start for being able to understand Cantonese even if she doesn’t speak it well. It’s 1993, though, so no mobile phones and no internet technology to keep in touch with her friends.

Revisiting the experience for her first graphic novel, Ruth Chan brings a career of experience illustrating children’s books, some of which she also writes, so knows her way around a story. She rapidly establishes sympathy for her younger self, showing her last couple of days in Canada, and then the disorientation of Hong Kong, utterly packed and crowded compared with the city Toronto was in 1993. It means the new family home is a flat in a skyscraper, not a house, there are masses of relatives she barely remembers, the food is so different, roads aren’t straight and flat, but twisting and steep, and her new school is a German one.

The new surroundings are interrupted with the story of her pregnant grandmother and the birth of her father, which is a frankly astonishing chronicle of hardship, superstition and callousness, almost inconceivable, yet a real insight into human nature under pressure. It’s also cleverly paced to tie into what Ruth is experiencing, and although a family story, not a parable, it’s relevant to what she’s going through and underlines family traits that will pull her through. Crucial is that although there are misunderstandings, and her relationship with her father is closer than with her mother, both parents take Ruth’s feelings on board.

With simple, yet detailed and friendly art Chan is aiming squarely at a younger audience who may be experiencing the unsettling and loneliness of moves themselves. Without belabouring the message she shows how there’s a necessity to buy into new surroundings, make an effort, and not expect everything to be the way it was before. While an awkward settling in period for the young Ruth, inquisitive readers should become immersed in another culture and want the best for her.