Book of Exemplary Women
In Diana Xin’s playful story collection Book of Exemplary Women, characters navigate relationships and religious mores while enduring hauntings.
These short stories focus on family bonds, marriages, and Chinese American families. Magical touches lighten the palette despite illnesses and death. In “Camp Wish-Song,” adolescent campers wonder if their cancer gave them superpowers. In “Someone Else,” two couples hit it off over horror movies but face a breakdown when they try to film their own. In “Sweet Scoundrel,” the Cao family adjusts to the news that their patriarch impregnated his mistress in Beijing.
Many of the situations are universal, but their protagonists don’t exhibit model behavior. At times, they transgress the rules by exploring their sexuality. In one tale, a pastor’s wife goes rogue in her thirties, writing erotica and having affairs. Elsewhere, a seventh-grader escapes a home Bible study to flirt with her former babysitter’s husband. The book also includes an erotic appraisal of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s characters and a Midwest high school update of Dracula.
Religion is a frequent theme. The spirit world contrasts with Christianity in the impish tale “The Magnificent Funerals of Grand Auntie Du,” wherein a woman attends her own funeral at the New Chinese Baptist Church of Seattle, watches a monk pray over her, and joins Ghost, who lived in her cellar, in wandering the earth. Several stories are connected by recurring characters: Du bequeaths Ghost to Mrs. Liu, who travels to China to bring back her daughter, Michelle; later, Michelle visits Mrs. Liu in a care facility and prepares to inherit Ghost. Brooding on choices and regrets, the stories sometimes have unsatisfying endings, if ones that suggest that immortality means being remembered by loved ones.
Book of Exemplary Women is a daring short story collection about loss and what might come next.
Reviewed by
Rebecca Foster
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
