An Introduction to All That Matters

After listening to several opinions and thoroughly researching more than half of the list I finally narrowed my choices to three books: Sweetness in the Belly, All That Matters, and Sweet Francaise. After further interest and research I discovered that I would most likely enjoy the second novel written by Wayson Choy, All That Matters, the most.

When I first glanced at the list, I didn’t even acknowledge this book. I guess I didn’t find the title to be very interesting. I found my eyes looking at titles such as The Cure for Death by Lightning, The Edible Woman, and Fall on Your Knees. I learned that even the title of a novel is extremely important; it’s one of the first things a reader looks for when finding a book to read. I didn’t notice it until I went through the list again. The title of this novel gives the reader an open mind of what it could possibly be about. I had absolutely no idea so I did a quick search on a very convenient little thing called Google.

I found out that the novel focuses on a family from China in the 1930’s and 40’s who leave China to live in Vancouver to escape war and famine in their small village. It also presents the issue of traditionalism vs. Westernization, which is an interesting issue in my opinion. They have to assimilate into this new society which they struggle with throughout the book. The family struggles to maintain their Chinese culture within the younger generation. They soon struggle with their identity once the world breaks out into a war, since they don’t know what country they should fight for. It’s something I’ve never had to experience in my life, so reading about it will hopefully help me understand the issue a bit more.

It’s not like most books I’ve read, but it has a strong theme of history and makes some references to war, which both interest me. I also learned about Chinese immigrants moving to British Columbia around that time in a class lecture before. We didn’t spend too much time on the topic, so hopefully by reading this novel I’ll learn more about it but from a personal perspective and not from a text book.

When it comes to historically written novels, they can either have an extremely interesting plot, with the right amount of action and conflict, or they can have a slightly lethargic plot, filled with a lot of information, but nothing to keep the plot flowing nicely for the reader. Since I’ve only read a few summaries and reviews, I don’t actually know how the author himself writes. Because I am going to have to befriend this book for the next couple months, I am strongly hoping this book is nothing like the second way I described historical novels. I would feel disappointed in my choice, but as of now I feel confident and I can’t wait to actually start reading this. Here’s to hoping after reading a few pages I won’t want to put it down.