A Song Everlasting

February 1, 2021

A popular singer in China, Yao Tian decides to earn some extra cash for his daughter's tuition by working a private gig in New York at the end of his state-supported choir's tour. Retribution is swift when he returns home--sponsors of the event support Taiwan's secession--and Yao flees for New York, determined to protect his artistic integrity. From the National Book Award winner.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 10, 2021
At the onset of the uninspired latest from Jin (The Boat Rocker), set in the early 2010s, singer Yao Tian stays behind in the U.S. for a few extra days after his state-sponsored choir’s tour ends. When his employer asks him to turn over his passport as punishment, Tian instead returns to the U.S. and settles in New York City, leaving behind his wife and teenage daughter. Now free to make his own decisions, Tian performs occasionally, sending what funds he can to his family, but after the Chinese media spreads the story of a violent altercation between Tian and his manager, his reputation is tarnished. He relocates to Boston and works for a cousin on home renovation jobs, all the while clinging to his dream of restarting his singing career, but the Chinese government cancels his passport, stranding him in the U.S. with few prospects. Jin has a knack for seamlessly compressing large swaths of time, yet Tian remains something of a mystery, with little effort made to explore his singing abilities. And though the author shuttles his protagonist through a series of trials over many years, Tian’s unfailing ability to overcome setbacks lessens the novel’s dramatic pull. As far as itinerant heroes’ quests for freedom go, this one doesn’t get the heart racing.

May 15, 2021
A Chinese singer tries to avoid becoming a political pawn after a tour of the United States puts him at odds with his government. Though 37 years old and a well-established vocalist in his native China, Yao Tian seems curiously na�ve and passive. Things seem to happen to him; he doesn't make them happen. At the end of his government-sponsored troupe's American tour, he's invited by a political activist he knew in China to perform at a celebration for Taiwan's National Day. He accepts, not out of any political convictions but because the fee he's offered will cover part of his daughter's tuition at an expensive Beijing prep school. The performance lands him in trouble back home, where he's threatened with the losses of employment and his passport. Those threats compel him to return to the United States, where he hopes his wife and daughter can eventually join him. The rest of the matter-of-fact narrative documents his life in America and the attempts by the Chinese government to besmirch his reputation, to turn what happens to him into a morality play about the consequences for an artist who betrays his homeland. Written with terse command, in short chapters and without literary flourish, the novel itself is no morality tale. Things happen, life is lived, a very different life than the one Tian might have known had he agreed to quit performing abroad and embarrassing his country. Far from his family and native culture, he processes personal tragedy, professional upheaval, and unlikely romance. Downward mobility takes his performing career from the concert hall to casinos to performing on the streets. Yet he doesn't seem to regret his exchange of collective security in China for individual freedom in the U.S. Though he had never considered himself particularly political, he becomes more acutely aware of the political dimensions of his position. As he loses some of his voice as a singer, he gains more of a voice as a songwriter. He makes a life for himself, and it is one that both surprises and satisfies him. Written with great control, the novel unfolds as surprisingly as life often does.

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June 18, 2021

National Book Award winner Ha Jin (Waiting; Boat Rocker) delivers literary fiction that is character driven, and his novels and short stories focus almost exclusively on the interior thoughts of their protagonists. Here, he disentangles the existential crisis of Yao Tian, an outspoken Chinese singer who refuses to return to China for fear of political retribution. Separated from his family, Yao Tian stays in New York and attempts to retain his identity as a performer while creating a new home in the United States. The author's ability to reframe the American dream through the perspective of an immigrant and political refugee is poignant. As his opportunities as a singer evaporate, Yao Tian finds himself taking on menial jobs and even busking in the subway. Each successive year puts more strain on his family ties back in China, and he must ultimately choose between his new life in the United States and a political system that he left behind. VERDICT Some readers may not find the protagonist's internal struggle compelling, but his story is written with heart and hope.--Joshua Finnell, Colgate Univ., Hamilton, NY

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2021
Tian, the ardent singer in Ha Jin's latest scrupulously narrated and deeply enmeshing novel, aligns with the Chinese men facing treacherous adversity in America he portrayed in previous tales, the spy in A Map of Betrayal (2014) and the journalist in The Boat Rocker (2016). Tian has accepted China's rigid control of his career, given all that his prestige brings to his wife, an ambitious academic, and their teenage daughter, who hopes to attend college in the U.S. But when he's on official tour in America, and Yabin, an immigrant friend adept at self-reinvention, invites him to extend his stay for a lucrative freelance performance, Tian's one bid for a brief moment of independence pitches him and his family into dire conflict with the Chinese authorities, ultimately leaving him stranded in New York. As Tian struggles to build a new life and pursue his art, he realizes how frightening freedom is, and how revelatory. Unsure whom to trust, he nonetheless courageously stands against China's violent tyranny only to run disastrously afoul of bias and torment in America. Artists and nonconformists are always in danger everywhere. Ha Jin's intimately precise, questioning, and quietly dramatic portrait of a devoted, ever-evolving artist committed to songs that are "ecstatic and mysterious and solitary" has far-reaching and profound resonance.

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