The Long March Home
You Tube Video
Book Reviews
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Roy uses well-placed metaphorical imagery, usually of birds,
"This is a historically consistent plot turn, but to make no mistake, it is one Western readers in particular will like. The book is hardly anti-China, but Roy, a Chinese-Canadian, also does not sugarcoat the oppression, fear, and insanity of Mao's regime. For example, a grieving, shocked young man whose parents were eaten by revolution-hungry villagers makes an appearance in the story. Disputed but detailed reports of widespread cannibalism during China’s Cultural Revolution exist, an inconceivable reality unknown to many Americans. This sort of horrifying history is certainly what readers will find interesting, as fiction and as fact.
... Imagining the circumstances of Mao’s regime is nearly impossible for those who have never known what it is like to live under the dictatorship of a homicidal megalomaniac. Roy takes it all on, and for readers who are listening, Roy’s own deeply internalized experience of her life in China during Mao’s dictatorship will be felt. At times, Roy seems to nearly romanticize the suffering of those who are provisionally “free” being unable to speak freely, but this is not to say that the dialogue has any weakness. Language has its limits, and there is much that can only be said with pauses or eye contact between her characters. Ludwig Wittgenstein would be proud of her handling of the dialogue and the narrative itself, though the intent may have been to channel Orwell more than the annals of analytic philosophy. Roy uses well-placed metaphorical imagery, usually of birds, to bring awareness of a multitude of constraints to a pique for all involved (particularly the reader). "
By Carrie Wallace in The Compulsive Reader
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Life of one child during one of China’s many turbulent time
“As a novel that provides a slice of life of one child during one of China’s many turbulent times in the 20th century, Roy’s second book works well. But were one to attempt to read it on another level, one that perhaps the author had not intended, the reader would be left wanting. The historical context of what transpires in the book is lacking. We want to know much more about the Cultural Revolution and its impact on the lives of the people; of the struggles the Chinese-Canadian mother experienced during her years of imprisonment (starvation? beatings? interrogation?); of the suddenness of her rehabilitation, etc. What were Western missionaries doing in China? What were their lives like there? Why did the Chinese government become so anti-foreign? ”
By Raymond Lum in China Insight (Febuary 2013 p. 13)
Book Launch
Blurb
The novel is a saga of the three generation of women set in China, Canada and the U.S. Agnes, a Canadian missionary in China falls in love with her Chinese tutor in the 1920s. Their American born daughter, Mayflora, looks for her father in China and starts her family there. The Cultural Revolution tears her family apart. Their maid, Yao, takes care of Yezi and her brother. After Joining Agnes in Boston, Yezi learns about her life in China with the man her mother still longs to find.
Sample Reading
Sample reading are available at the following address Read Sample Here and iTunes Preview
Reader Reviews
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"Zoe S. Roy has written a stunning first novel about a family deeply immersed in the political events that transpired during The Cultural Revolution in the 1960's and 70's in China. The story effectively and poignantly details the Cultural Revolution and the demoralizing impact it had on the Chinese people."
By Marilou George in The Kindle Book Review
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"With her stunning debut novel, Zoe S. Roy has proven herself a powerful voice in Canadian fiction. Spanning from China to Boston to Halifax over many decades, The Long March Home is the story of one family's experience through Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution and their struggles to define themselves as individuals and as family espite differences of culture and nationality."
By Mary Lavers in Cozy Little Book Journal
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"Well written, steady pace, and an endearing yet unexpected conclusion give this debut novel five stars."
By Marion Marchetto on Marion's Bookshelf
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"The novel stands in relation to 'New Immigrant Literature' by writers such as Ha Jin and Anchee Min, on the one hand, and the so-called “Scar Literature” in China, which flourished in post-Cultural Revolution China, on the other."
By Zhan Qiao in Amerasia Journal 38:2
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"The Long March Home presents the readers with a possibility of peeling through the multiple layers of meaning to find the core message that Roy intends to deliver."
By Ling Zhang at Chapters.indigo
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