On the blog last week
Monday – I published my review of Agricola: Commander by Simon Turney.
Tuesday – My take on this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Things You Might Be Thankful For.
Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.
Friday – I shared my review of The Cracked Mirror by Christopher Brookmyre.
Saturday – I published my review of Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey
Sunday – I shared my review of Divination: A Conspiracy of Blood by J. A. Downes.
New on my shelves
Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China by Jung Chang (William Collins)
Jung Chang’s Wild Swans was a book that defined a generation – the story of ‘three daughters of China’: Jung, her mother and her grandmother and their lives during a century of revolution. Fly, Wild Swans is, quite simply, what happened next.
Jung Chang arrived in the UK in 1978 aged 26, part of a Chinese scholarship programme for study abroad. Finding herself in the London of punk, political protests and Ziggy Stardust, she felt as if she’d landed on the moon. She and her fellow students had all grown up in complete isolation from the west, living in fear as to what might happen if they broke any of the strict rules imposed upon them by their government. It was an invaluable opportunity but came at a cost of long-term separation from her mother and family in China.
As Jung began to adjust to life in the West, she warmed to the fashion scene, rebelled and thrived. Her studies took off and she became the first person from the People’s Republic of China to be awarded a doctorate from a British university.
Fly, Wild Swans is, in many ways, Jung’s love letter to her mother set against China’s development from the relative freedoms of the late-1970s and untrammelled capitalism of the 1990s to the current authoritarian repressive rule of Xi-Jinping. With vivid flashbacks to her family’s experience in communist China, the book offers an extraordinary account of Jung’s research into the genocidal regime of Mao Tse-Tung, the many fictions she uncovered and the political consequences of publishing her subsequent biography.
As Jung becomes a successful academic and writer in the West, Fly, Wild Swans demonstrates how much she relies on her mother still living in China and the painful years in which politics has prevented them meeting. Through the arc of their respective lives, she gives an immersive, deeply moving and unforgettable account of what it is like to live in a communist dictatorship and the threats modern China poses to the international world order. It is family history at its best.
What I’m currently reading
I’m reading Ravenglass from my TBR pile, Small Acts of Resistance from my NetGalley shelf and listening to the audiobook of Atmosphere (set in the final time period I need for the When Are You Reading? 2025 Challenge)
Look out for…
- Book Review: Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
- My Top 3 November 2025 Reads
- #6Degrees of Separation
What Cathy Read Next... 