Meanwhile, Lisa Ko has taken the headlines and reminded us that beyond them lie messy, brave, extraordinary, ordinary lives. It is still heartening to see a novel put a human face on migration, and perhaps in future books, this budding novelist’s true promise will be realized.

Is hers a cost-free freedom? And why is her penchant for freedom made so much of, if it is without consequence? Where Deming’s story, too, eventually devolves into a conventional narrative of a young person learning to follow his bliss, it’s hard not to see this book as one that takes risks but then hedges its bets. Yet rather than mine this richly unsettling territory, Ko contrives things such that not all Polly’s actions - including her effective abandonment of Deming - turn out to be her fault. ( From the publisher.Thoroughly researched and ambitious in scope, Ko’s book ably depicts the many worlds Deming’s life encompasses.It is impossible not to root for a boy so foundationally unmoored by circumstance. It’s a moving story of how a boy comes into his own when everything he loves is taken away, and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of the past. Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid examination of borders and belonging. Loving and selfish, determined and frightened, Polly is forced to make one heartwrenching choice after another. Told from the perspective of both Daniel-as he grows into a directionless young man-and Polly, Ko’s novel gives us one of fiction’s most singular mothers. But far from all he’s ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his adoptive parents’ desire that he assimilate with his memories of his mother and the community he left behind. Eventually adopted by a pair of well-meaning white professors, Deming is moved from the Bronx to a small town upstate and renamed Daniel Wilkinson. The Leavers examines the ways we make sense of our identity and how we navigate through the world. It deals with the messy and complex issues of adoption, borders, families, and parenthood. With his mother gone, eleven-year-old Deming is left mystified and bereft. It is a sheer delight that this book exists and the beginning of, hopefully, more books to come that feature adoption. One morning, Deming Guo’s mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, goes to her job at a nail salon-and never comes home. Lisa Ko’s powerful debut, The Leavers, is the winner of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction, awarded by Barbara Kingsolver for a novel that addresses issues of social justice.

The leavers book review