The Foremost Good Fortune

by Susan Conley

Susan Conley, her husband, and their two young sons say good-bye to their friends, family, and house in Maine for a two-year stint in a high-rise apartment in Beijing, prepared to embrace the inevitable onslaught of new experiences that such a move entails. But Susan can’t predict just how much their lives will change.

While her husband is consumed with his job, Susan works on finishing her novel and confronting the challenges of day-to-day life in an utterly foreign country: determining the proper way to buy apples at a Chinese megamarket; bribing her little boys to ride the school bus; fielding invitations to mysterious “sweater parties” and tracking down the faux-purse empire of the infamous Bag Lady; and getting stuck in an elevator, unable to call for help in Mandarin.

Despite the distractions, there are many occasions for joy. From road trips to the Great Wall and bartering for a “starter Buddha” at the raucous flea market to lighting fireworks in the streets for the Chinese New Year and feasting on the world’s best dumplings in back-alley restaurants, they gradually turn their unfamiliar environs into a true home.

Then Susan learns she has cancer. After undergoing treatment in Boston, she returns to Beijing, again as a foreigner—but this time, it’s her own body in which she feels a stranger. Set against the eternally fascinating backdrop of modern China and full of insight into the trickiest questions of motherhood—How do you talk to children about death? When is it okay to lie?—this wry and poignant memoir is a celebration of family and a candid exploration of mortality and belonging.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel, China, Biography Memoir, Asia, Biography

288 pages, Hardcover

First published February 8, 2011

About the author

Susan Conley is the author of Landslide (Knopf, February 2021): “a spectacular tale of hardship and healing. Conley has knocked it out of the park," (Lily King, Writers and Lovers). Susan's previous novel Elsey Come Home (Knopf, 2019), was a Most Anticipated/Best Book at Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire Magazine, Amazon Books, Pop Sugar, Huffington Post, Southern Living Magazine, Fodors, The Library Journal, Maine Women’s Magazine, and others.
Susan is also the author of Paris Was the Place (Knopf, 2013), an Amazon Fall Big Books Pick for fiction, an Indie Next Pick, an Elle Magazine Readers Prize Pick, and a People magazine Top Pick. Susan’s memoir, The Foremost Good Fortune (Knopf 2011), was excerpted in the New York Times Magazine and the Daily Beast. It was an Oprah Magazine Top Ten Pick of the Month, a Slate Magazine “Book of the Week” and a finalist for the Goodreads Choice Award. It won the Maine Literary Award for Memoir. Other work of hers has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, The Huffington Post, Ploughshares, The Harvard Review and elsewhere.

Susan has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Breadloaf Writers Conference, and the Massachusetts Arts Council. A former faculty member at Emerson College, she has also taught at Colby College and Simmons College. She currently teaches at the University of Maine’s Stonecoast MFA Program, and is the co-founder of The Telling Room, a nonprofit creative writing lab in Portland, Maine.

Reviews

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

This memoir really fell short of my expectations. The first third of the book the author complained about not fitting in in her new country, China. She actually begrudged her sons, 4 and 6, for mastering Mandarin faster than she did. It is horrible for me to admit this, but when Conley finally went to the doctor's (around page 100), I thought, "Oh, good. She's finally going to get to the cancer part." Bad, I know, but thus far the book was just another "ugly American" whining. The unfortunate thing is she wrote for another 175 pages without saying much about how the cancer affected her or her family. She went to doctor's appointments, flew back to the States for surgery, and returned to China. No real soul-searching here. Neither did she talk much about what she has learned as she adjusted to life in such a different culture. One thing that really bugged me was how often her kids asked about religion, death, and the interaction between the two. Conley never answered them. Yes, she didn't know exactly what, if anything, she believed, but she had plenty of time to come up with SOME answer for her sons. At the very end, Conley got trapped in an elevator on the one year anniversary of her surgery. She got angry and overreacted, lashing out at the building super, her husband (on her cell phone) for bringing her to China, China itself. She knew she was acting irrationally, but she also knew that she was venting her anger at having cancer. This was finally real. I wish the whole book had been like that. Conley is a professional author; I expected better.

[gudetamama · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to reading this book, and I was hoping I would like it, because I will soon be transplanted into Chinese culture/country where I plan to raise my children. My future husband is a native, and I know my children will soon be overtaking my Chinese level by the time they're in kindergarten. So in this book I wanted to catch a glimpse of how the author felt lost/disoriented/isolated in the new country. I felt like I could really relate with all that (except for the cancer part).

She does offer some slices of Beijing life. But I could not enjoy them as much because of her delivery. In the first parts of the book, what I disliked was the airy-fairy, pensive tone of the narrator. She was also a little too heavy-handed with the metaphors. Like, let's say she encounters Object X. She will then compare herself, or her sons, or her husband, to how they are like object or situation X. There's nothing wrong with that, inherently, but maybe it was done in a way that was too conspicuous, or it felt a little forced.

I liked that each chapter was relatively short, like a magazine piece, but I wasn't very fond how the book is generously sprinkled with "Sex In The City" type rhetorical questions or "thoughtful" observations.

Then after the cancer... geez, what a downer. I know I'm not being very sympathetic. I know she's been through hell. I know you've been in an abyss, but do you have to drag your readers down into it as well? It's such a depressing read. I feel it's a waste because she had a lot of material here, but she just wasn't distanced enough from the issue yet to be able to turn it into something closer to art. I felt disappointed because for a poet, her wording is so artless. I was looking for some beautiful turn of phrase. I wanted to tell her: You're a writer! Do more with the language!

Instead it was like her narrative was sapped of energy, and she used only the most basic words, in an ordinary manner.

Too navel-gazing for me. I wish she wasn't so closed off/resistant to/scared of the new culture -- at least in the end. She can be all these things at the start, but I'd love some small signs of transformation that show how she's opened up in the end. She SAYS she's changed, in the end. But I would have wanted to have seen it. I know it's a memoir, but there's too much telling, not enough showing. I guess I wanted vignettes, not a journal.

The best part of the book for me was at the end, the scene where they say goodbye to Lao Wu. It wasn't overwrought, so it struck the right note.

Maybe people who are cancer survivors will appreciate this more than I did.

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two Susans in this book: before and after cancer. The first Susan frustrated me with her negativity and often superior tone. Yes, Beijing is a pretty dirty city, the bureaucracy can drive you crazy, and if you don't speak Mandarin you're in serious trouble. But the Beijing of 2008 was also an amazingly exciting place. What kept me reading, despite the author's apparent lack of adventurous spirit, was the small insights into Beijing living. The book is structured in short episodes centered around a new experience or event and when the other expats or the locals talk through Conley's words, she often strikes gold.
And then there is cancer and, surprisingly, a second Susan emerges and the desperate tone that dominated before is gone. I don't know if this contrast was meant on purpose, but the second Susan is so much more sympathetic without ever pulling the pity card. In fact, after cancer, Conley becomes incredibly active, energetic, even funny, and her self-doubting is always constructive. She will not let cancer, or the China she could not stand before, beat her. Instead, she learns to live with both and embrace everything these experiences have to teach her.
The last chapter is particularly touching, as Conley realizes that returning home is a lot less simple affair than the family thought. It may sound as a cliche, but after living in Asia you can never leave it completely. Conley, however, makes this point much more eloquently that I just did. A worthy read.

[Catherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Foremost Good Fortune is a book about dislocation - the dislocation of moving to another country; the dislocation of worrying your choices were wrong; the dislocation of disease (Conley's breast cancer). Conley, her husband, and her two sons move to Beijing for two years so that her husband can establish a company there, and while some of the book does offer a look at what the city is like, what China means to an American set down in its midst, this isn't a travel narrative, or a wrestling with the intricacies of knowing another place. Conley passes along tidbits of information about culture, city planning, smog, capitalism, Mao, and getting lost in the Forbidden City, but these are all filtered through her uncertainty about herself, her children, her ability to learn Chinese, and her medical situation. The book is a powerful rumination on what happens when the usual is removed, when the ways in which we anchor ourselves are taken away, and on the human capacity to reflect and adapt. I found it deeply absorbing, and loved the simplicity and lyricism of the prose, the honestly of Conley's reflections on parenting, and her struggle to reorient herself mid-life. A truly beautiful book.

[Heidi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Susan, an American housewife from Maine, moved her young family (her boys were 4 and 6) to China for her husband's dream job. And Susan didn't like it. She didn't settle in well, didn't have friends, found it hard to communicate, didn't like the smog, etc. And later she came home and wrote a book about how much she hated China. Sound like fun?

Halfway through the book, Susan got breast cancer. Unsurprisingly, Susan with breast cancer is even less happy and less likable than Susan without breast cancer. I tried to be sympathetic, really, but I was so tired of Susan's whining that I just wanted to make her shut up.

And I finally realized she would shut up if I just closed the book forever. So I did.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weirdly, I really enjoyed this book, despite disliking 2 major aspects of it: (1) it struck me as yet another privileged white woman navel-gazing expedition (I seem to have read a lot of these lately... I'd dub it the "Eat, Pray, Love" genre but there are so many of these that I hate to name it after only one book), and (2) so much of it was focused on her struggles with child-rearing while in Beijing, a topic which has no relevance on my childless life and in which I am not interested. Yet I still really enjoyed this book. I think it was because China is becoming so important in the world, and is thus interesting to read about culturally, and that made the Chinese people she befriended just naturally interesting people.

I liked reading about her Chinese teacher--a young woman whose parents had impoverished themselves to send her to college in Beijing, where she had a boyfriend she didn't really like, yet felt compelled to marry, and where she felt compelled to stay stuck in her relatively dead-end job teaching Chinese to American expats. The author started asking her probing questions about what she really wanted to do with her life, and this woman had never considered the question. She said, in China, your feelings, dreams and aspirations are not relevant and nobody ever asks about them. Yet all it took was one person asking her in a brief conversation and it had an impact on her life (she ended up getting a better job). Extrapolate from there and muse about where China will go over the next 10 years, especially with more exposure to the outside world via the Internet. It certainly seems like China's young generation is primed for something... I don't know what, but something unexpected.

[Paula Gallagher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conley agrees to relocate her family to Beijing for two years as her husband Tony introduces credit-rating systems to state-run banks. He's excited to travel back to the country he'd backpacked through in the mid 80s, and he knows the language. She doesn't, and she's in charge of the minutiae of their daily lives-- caring for their young sons, shopping(including locating $10 a box Honey Nut Cheerios), managing the household (hiring a competent ayi who can cook and clean), and navigating the complicated "dating" rituals required to make new friends. Just as she's beginning to get a handle on things, she discovers two lumps in her left breast.

Beijing is not the place to be when you have a cancer concern, as Conley quickly learns when the Chinese doctor recommends that she wait three months before taking any action. She wisely consults her stateside doctor who uges her to act immediately. It turns out to be cancer, and it's clear she needs to return to the U.S. for top-notch care.

Conley provides an interesting outsider's perception of a very different culture, an experience colored by the stress and fear of fighting cancer in unknown territory.

[Laura McNeal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think that you enjoy a memoir if you feel that the writer sees the experience as you would yourself, had it happened to you. Plus, I require a good deal of poetic finesse—I want the writer to convey that experience in a way that is somehow poetic without being precious, funny without being mean, empathetic and yet not sentimental. All boxes were checked here. There is something wonderfully honest to me about her descriptions of being an American in China, and a mother, and a cancer patient, but I don’t think I would have been able to endure the honesty without her artful, concise shaping of sentences and chapters.

[Joanne Clarke Gunter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not like this book very much and it was a struggle to finish it. The writing is fine. The author is the problem. I have read a number of books about Americans, Chinese-Americans, and Chinese people working and living in China, but none have been as whiny as this one. And all other of the authors I have read on this topic found SOMETHING they loved about China and wrote about it. This author spends so much time complaining about the fact that she has no friends, cannot speak the language (even though she is taking lessons), no one understands her, she understands no one, she feels left out, her husband has it so much easier because he speaks the language, she hates the smog, cannot find the things she wants, on and on and on. Did she really think that most Chinese people speak English or that Honey Nut Cheerios are readily available? Then she discovers she has a lump in her breast which turns out to be early stage breast cancer and she and her family fly back to the U.S. for surgery and treatment. I wish the book had ended there. But it didn't. Her husband has to go back to China for his work, so she grapples with whether to return and does decide to go back. And the complaining starts anew, now coupled with her (understandable) fears about the cancer returning. I had hoped this would be a book that was more about China than about the many insecurities and fears of an American woman in China.

[Cristy Boisvert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Married to a man from Beijing, I've often wondered what it would be like to live in China. In The Foremost good Fortune, Susan Conley quenched my thirst for Expats living in China. Her husband takes a job in Beijing, so they pack up their house in Portland, Maine and embark on the journey of a lifetime with their two young boys. Her cautious-adventurous spirit is relatable, especially as a middle-aged mother. She fumbles socially, attempting to make friends but finds herself lost in translation. Her children seem to be adjusting better than she does. Just as she seems to get a hold on the culture she discovers she is a foreigner in her own body when she is diagnosed with breast cancer. She returns to Boston for surgery and treatment, where she discovers how fortunate she is to have a steady support system waiting for her at home in Maine. Spending time in her quiet home town, surrounded by people who love her is exactly what she needs. Post treatment, they return to Beijing to rejoin her husband. The relationships she forges with the key players in their Beijing life are precious and unforgettable. She draws a heady parallel between living in a foreign country and living in a body ridden with cancer. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Next stop: Paris in her novel Paris Was the Place. Susan, I’ll go anywhere with you.

[Benjamin Rubenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I’ve come to feel as if I’m bobbing in a lake where only people with cancer swim. It’s a big lake. My husband is sitting by my side on the floor next to the couch holding the tubing while Judith massages me. But he is not in the lake. Only people with cancer can be in the lake. So where Tony is could best be described as on the shore waiting for me to come back. Maybe he is rummaging in the forest for wood to make a fire to keep us warm. But the biggest surprise of all is still that Tony is not in the lake. That he’s never going to be able to swim in the lake. He doesn’t have cancer. The thin line between having and not having seems malleable sometimes, but for me that line is everything. It separates. I lie on the couch after Judith leaves and hold on to Tony’s hand until I feel most of the solitude wash away."

I have many thoughts and feelings from having just finished reading this. That is in part because Susan is my teacher, my mentor, my writing-epiphany creator, my friend. I bet many other commenters have hit on some of those same thoughts and feelings, so maybe here is one that is more novel: Susan is a badass.

[Ruby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being from Maine, and having lived various parts of my life in Asia, including China, I really enjoyed her honesty and candor. She tells the truth about the internal controversies a mom has. Never mind a mom who is diagnosed with Cancer in the midst of the big family adventure.

[Sherry Spencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It's the story of an American family who moves to China for 2 years. Only the dad knows Chinese, so the mom and 2 little boys have a lot to learn about the culture and language. The story is told by the mom and she had me laughing and crying.

[Shelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this memoir and read it in every spare moment I’ve had.

[C Frisbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Foremost Good Fortune is a testament my belief that the best storytellers begin as poets. After earning an MFA in poetry and going on to publish poems in some of the nation's best journals, Susan Conley has written a memoir that can feel like a poem in its exploration of language and voice, yet the book also bears the virtues of creative non-fiction: strong stories and reader friendly writing. This mix makes for a fascinating ride through modern China! --and also through the mysterious, body-sized world of cancer that Susan and her family and the reader enter about a third of the way through the book.

Unlike many memoirs, Conley's doesn't force her story into a play-by-play document of everything that happened to her in China. Instead, she weaves together select memories that don't necessarily follow one another in obvious ways. The reader will enjoy stringing connections between these vividly detailed, often humorous, and suspenseful anecdotes. In this way, chapters in The Foremost Good Fortune--some with Chinese titles like "Chabuduo" or with English titles like "The Great Wall Is Older Than Johnny Cash"--can each be read like a poetic short story, or they can be read as parts of a larger whole. Which is so much fun. I also have to add that Conley's kids say the most unpredictable, laugh-out-loud, or profound things--which kept me constantly on my toes and waiting for their next chance to speak.

At first, I was interested in hearing about modern China from the perspective of an American who has just lived there for three years. I don't normally read books about motherhood or breast cancer, but I'm deeply thankful I picked up this one. Conley has translated her experiences into a gripping story that will fill anyone with a fresh sense of meaning and heightened awareness. In The Foremost Good Fortune, each chapter becomes a literal, emotional, and mental adventure that coheres within the book's overarching themes of American motherhood, adult expat life in Beijing (a city where hardly anyone speaks English), and the shadow of breast cancer that comes to define, for Conley, the illuminations of her life.

As she leads you through her personal discoveries, Conley will point you toward the small and large moments that make us all feel alive.

[Jaylia3 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Susan Conely’s honest and introspective memoir Foremost Good Fortune is a gripping read involving multiple, interconnecting spheres. Covering the time surrounding the Beijing Olympics when she lived in China with her husband and young sons, it’s part travelogue, part chronicle of the expat experience in one of the world’s most powerful and fascinating nations, and part a record of what it feels like to leave just about everything and everyone you know to start a new life.

Most authors of books on relocating to an exotic part of the world are thrilled to be on their journey. Susan Conely is openly ambivalent and that is part of what makes this book so eye-opening and interesting. It’s her husband’s love of China that led the family across the world to where he had found a two year job. Her sons were resistant and unhappy at first, but then they seemed to be adjusting faster than she was. Though Conely is both accomplished and independent she did not arrive in China knowing the language and so found herself uncomfortably more dependent on her husband than she ever had been at home in Maine. Starting from scratch she began learning the language, finding friends and enjoying her life in a new and sometimes beautiful country.

Then she got cancer. That’s a journey I’ve been on, and her description of how deeply disorienting it is, how it changes the way you think and look at the world in ways neither you or your loved ones can always anticipate were true to my experience.

A well written page turner.

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read through some of the other reviews of this book, and it was widely liked. However, I had some majori issues. The memoir retells about the years that Susan Conley spent in China with her husband and her two young sons. During this time, she had to adjust to a completely new culture, new language, and new routines. She also was faced with the devastating news that she had breast cancer.

In theory, the things that happened to her were monumental. I can't even imagine the changes that she and her family went though - it's one thing to move across the world when it's just you, but to move an entire family, that's just a little (ok, a lot) crazy!

However, in reality, I just got frustrated. I felt that she was struggling from the beginning, and while she did THINGS to take in the country, she never truly embraced it. She was constantly irritated, constantly annoyed, and constantly unhappy. I was originally thinking that she would move past it, but it kept coming up through every part of the book. I think she broached acceptance towards the end, but not enough for me to truly fall in love with the book...

I don't know - it just didn't grab me. I was looking forward to the end of the book by the time I was halfway through. That's not a good sign.

[Qi Fu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must start by saying that I usually don't love memoir so was skeptical when a friend in the states pointed me to the video on susan conley dot com The video immediately drew me in, I read the first chapter on line, ordered the kindle version and could not put it down after that.

I have lived in China for six years and can say that this book vividly captures Beijing on the eve of the Olympics and the feelings that every foreigner has when living in a new environment as an ex-pat. It brought back many memories of when I first moved here and the experiences we had as a young family trying to navigate all of the new complexities of life in China.

What makes this book for me is the writing. The author's incredible eye for detail, the subtle ways in which she treats topics of mortality and isolation and the wonderful sense of humor throughout. The way in which she explores the universal truths through her children's eyes is priceless. Would recommend to everyone--father, mother, daughter, son.

[Gretchen Peters LaChance · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful read!! I had the pleasure of meeting Susan Conley at a book-signing in her honor. Had I read the book ahead of time, there would have been much more to say, compliments to offer and questions to ask! I don't think I've ever read a memoir before - cerainly not one written by someone whose hand I have shaken. Her words are so smart, so vivid, she introduces the reader to the wonders and complexities of China - it's culture, people, landscape and language. I laughed, I cried - hers is a story that sticks with you. Her experience as a mother and cancer survivor are completely relatable and so heart-felt. Bravo, Susan. Thank you for sharing your story. I look forward to reading more from you!

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book by entering through the Giveaway section. My copy is sgined by the author, Susan Conley. I enjoyed this book very much, as Conley shares her story of living in China and surviving cancer. She relays her experiences in an endearing and real way. I somehow thought the entire book was going to center around her cancer, but I was happy to discover that she wrote about her family's quirky adjustments to a new country, and how they came together to triumph over adversity. Conley does not sugar coat it though -- she doesn't shy away from exposing the pain, discord and sense of isolation. I would recommend reading this book, and am so glad I had the opportunity to hear her story!

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Until the last few chapters, I hadn't planned on rating this book so highly. It seemed a little too introspective and, well, navel-gazing at times to me. The author moves to Beijing with her husband and two sons, experiences difficulties in adjusting to life there, and then discovers she has breast cancer.
But in the last few chapters, I ended up being glad the author had been so very honest, so transparent. I really felt like I'd experienced and learned some of what she had experienced and learned, and I'm glad she took us on the journey, warts and all. Very good read.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this memoir after finishing the author's novel, Paris Was the Place.I loved the novel, and I was so happy to discover that I felt the same about the memoir-- I realized what a genuine voice Conley has in both fiction and non-fiction. And to hear her talk about writing that novel while living in China made everything more connected. I can't decide which I liked better-- the memoir or the novel, but it's fair to see I loved them both.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, though I wanted to feel even more deeply her emotional experience of being diagnosed with cancer in the most foreign of countries, China. Beautifully written. Would make a compelling movie if done right.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an unusual story, nonfiction, about a family from Maine who go to China to live for a couple of years while the father of the family establishes a business in China for his company. The mother and two young boys are left on their own much of time, trying to learn a difficult language and negotiate daily living. They have a wonderful driver who takes them wherever they need to go and more, and eventually hire a nanny/housekeeper. Both of these people become family our the little Maine family and help them along the way and daily. The boys dislike school at first but they learn the language faster than the mother; the father already speaks Chinese fluently from spending time there when he was younger.

The story gives us a cultural look at living in China and all the beauty and pitfalls, sounds, scents, religion (or not) and so much more. Then the mother learns she has cancer and since she is a writer and working on a novel, she writes about all of it, including cancer.

The book is well done and covers a lot of interesting"territory". It's charming and alarming. It's a little about everyone who moves to a culture where they don't know the language, and all the obstacles they run into, and also all the lovely and helpful people.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book made me consider the definition between a diary and a memoir. Overall my impression is that a memoir is more polished and cohesive. Perhaps unfortunately, many of the elements of this book were diary-like in the accounting the day-to-day life of the author and her family. There were definitely themes that emerged, but sometimes I felt like the words were more a rehashing of her time in China than a reconstruction of a seminal period of her life. I thought it was interesting that she had to deal with having cancer amidst this culture shock, which in itself of course is its own shock. I kept on thinking that it was fortunate that the author had the financial resources to be able to travel home to treat it (and also to have a maid and a driver etc in China, but I digress).

[Mevanee Parmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this memoir because I have several friends who have visited China, and Susan Conley's layered details bring Beijing to life. Conley notices everything, from the street vendor to the smells of her neighborhood.
Also, I have helped several relatives battling cancer and her accounts about her battle are piercingly true. Her account of her children's reactions to her disease allow the reader a wide range of emotions, but each child confronts the "scary stuff" in a different way.
Through each personal essay, the reader is drawn into life in a new country. Having made an international move and lived abroad for five years with small children, I found her narrative very compelling and could identify with many of her emotions.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was okay. It is a memoir of the time the author lived in China for 2 1/2 years with her husband and young sons. A large part of this book is her dealing with a breast cancer/mastectomy diagnosis while in China and her feeling alone.
This is the second book in a row that I have read and felt sad that they don’t believe in God because she seems anchorless. Her boys keep asking her what she believes in and she has no answers, until the end and she says she believes in words.
This book had a handful of the Fword with no other language, sex or violence.

[Peebee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, but ultimately I didn’t like it very much. I’ve now visited China three times, and wanted to hear more about the culture and daily life there. But this book was mostly about a very ordinary expat experience that was marred by the author having cancer. While I find it difficult to critique memoirs, this I just found to be tedious and self-centered. While I had hopes of some kind of transformation or insight happening, I think the cancer made Susan even more self-centered and unable to engage with life in China.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to enjoy this book. I'd been to China, I'd experienced culture shock. I wanted to relate. But she was just so depressing. Even in my worst times, I still manage to find some joy for some of the time and keep optimistic. But not her. Every piece of joy was tainted by her eternal criticism. She sucked the joy out of everything, and this was even before she got cancer. She begrudgingly went to China, she resented her husband for wanting to go. And it was all downhill from there. Lots of naval gazing, without finding any answers. Excruciating and disappointing.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you were ever curious about what it would be like to live in modern day China this memoir describes it beautifully. The smoggy air, the high rise buildings of Beijing, the noodle shops all become part of this families daily life. Intertwined is the authors diagnosis with cancer while they are there and a brief experience with the Chinese medical system before returning to the US for treatment.