— ‘Mother’s Tongue: A Story of Forgiving and Forgetting,’ by Susanna HoLin Min

    linmin67@126.com

    READING an English novel set in Hong Kong and eastern Guangdong’s Chui Chow (or Chaozhou as known on the Chinese mainland) is sure to be interesting: people speaking different dialects in these regions, i.e. Cantonese, Hakka and Chiu Chow; the distinctive local cultures; and the ground-breaking changes in these regions over the past several decades. Of course, a fascinating story needs more than these.

    Susanna Ho’s English-language novel, “Mother’s Tongue: A Story of Forgiving and Forgetting,” published by the U.S. Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co., tells the story of a woman who speaks a dialect that nobody in her family understands, after a 14-hour brain surgery procedure goes far longer than expected. Like most people in Hong Kong, the woman’s family speaks Cantonese. Some of the older members also speak Hakka, a dialect of the northeastern part of Guangdong. So the family is worried when the woman talks only in Chiu Chow, a dialect spoken by people in eastern Guangdong.

    Starting from the stunning discovery of the woman’s language change, the novel — the first by Ho, who teaches full-time at a Hong Kong university — continues with an interesting investigation by the woman’s daughter who travels to Chiu Chow on a visit aimed at discovering what makes her mother switch to a dialect that she was not known to have been exposed to before. The investigation turns out to be a revealing one that leads to her daughter’s understanding of her mother’s early childhood and teenage years in Chiu Chow, with interesting episodes telling the romantic stories of young people — the woman’s innocent feelings towards her neighbor-brother and another woman’s desperate attempts and cunning plots to save a relationship with the young man — in an era when they were supposed not to be in love, but to sacrifice themselves to the country. That part of the story happened during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, which makes the novel even more dramatic.

    The author is talented at creating suspense and surprises. Setting the story under the backdrop of cultural differences and historical dramas also makes the novel fascinating, especially to foreign readers who may not know much about these regions’ local cultures, the poverty-stricken mainlanders fleeing their motherland to Hong Kong decades ago and the Cultural Revolution that brought out the ugliest of human evils.

    The novel’s theme is about making life choices. What happened in this woman’s past that blocked her ability to speak the dialect that she’s used for decades? Ho gives readers the answer through a well-told story.

    The author will meet readers at a book-signing event at Dymocks bookstore, Sai Kung, Hong Kong on Feb. 21. The book is also available at amazon.com.