Alison Wong: As the Earth Turns Silver

Set in New Zealand, this is the story of Katherine and her two children as in interlocks with the story of Yung, a Chinese man who moves to Wellington with his brother to support their families in China. The story focusses mostly on the prejudices against Chinese immigrants and how that led Katherine's son to kill Yung when he discovers his mother's affair with him. Wong wants to sketch a rather grotesque story of intolerance early in the 20th century and its effects both on the Chinese family that lost a promising member, and the New Zealand family that suffered as a result of the mother's affair with a Chinaman. 

Alison Wong is a New Zealanders of Chinese descent whose grandparents migrated from China in the 1890s. Though the story presents some accurate historical information on people and events in New Zealand in the early 20th century, the story itself is not that of Wong herself or of her family as she declares in the author's note that ends the book.

It was a pleasant enough read though not greatly captivating. The characters lacked a certain charisma that left them, at least for me, rather distant and uninteresting. There were instances when the story managed to grab my attention and I did not have to force myself to finish it. However, I wouldn't strongly recommend it as a must read. The shift back and forth between Katherine's point of view and that of Yung is interesting enough. But having read quite a few Asian and Asian American novels, this was not specifically new to me and failed to make the book a specially original one where I'm concenred.