Summary
It takes a village to raise a child. In Yiyun Li’s The Vagrants, she shows that it takes a village to abandon one, too. The state execution of a young, female counterrevolutionary in post-Cultural Revolution China reaches deep into the psyche of the villagers in Muddy River, the political prisoner’s rural hometown. Far from Beijing, her family, friends, and countrymen must choose their alliances carefully, as one false move might raise the suspicion of the authorities; or even worse, those of their neighbors.
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Critique
Already recognized as one of the finest writers of her generation, Yiyun Li offers us a first novel that is an immaculately rendered portrait of the risks of political association and how the power of the state manifests in a people who are, by all counts, beyond its reach. Though gritty at times, Li writes a precise, traditional narrative that diffuses a handful of subplots through several characters’ points of view with the tidiness of a tea ceremony.
Li evokes a specific time and place that will satisfy those interested in (recent) historical fiction, while challenging us to see the larger issues of personal freedom in a carefully watched society. This is not a happy book, but it is a meaningful one.
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