[easyazon-image align=”left” asin=”1935639552″ locale=”us” height=”333″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41EeoQw4r4L.jpg” width=”216″ alt=”Karen Shepard” ]Vivid and Complex
A Review of
The Celestials: A Novel
Karen Shepard
Paperback: Tin House, 2013
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Reviewed by Matt Miles.
In June of 1870, Massachusetts shoe manufacturer Calvin Sampson found an alternative for striking shoemakers by hiring seventy five Chinese laborers from San Francisco. This incident would later be known as Sampson’s Chinese experiment, and would be bookended by the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. Whether there was a connection between the two is not Karen Shepard’s focus in her new novel, The Celestials. What concerns her is how the arrival of the Chinese workers, the titular Celestials, affected life in the New England town of North Adams. More particularly, the book focuses on specific members of the community.
Shepard begins nearly every chapter by setting the larger historical background against which the story unfolds. This adds to the descriptions of the town: what it sounded, smelled and looked like, and what it felt like, to give the reader a vivid sense of being there. Shepard’s writing style further transports the reader to the historical era through historically appropriate narrative and dialogue. Any reader who wonders what it must have felt like to live in Massachusetts in the late 19th century will not be disappointed. When the Celestials arrive, and Sampson takes the precaution of arming himself, the reader holds her breath with the rest of the town.
By giving a general description of the story’s beginning, I may have given a prospective reader certain expectations for the plot. The author assuages these expectations early on with flash forwards revealing certain historical outcomes. This story isn’t about a struggle between Unions, immigration and Big Business. Those topics come up and are dealt with, but the primary concern is the people it affects.
Karen Shepard chooses to filter the community’s reaction to the events through six characters. More are given to us through brief sketches here and there, but the six main characters have the primary focus. Sampson and his wife Julia are memorable from the opening when it is revealed Julia had suffered thirteen miscarriages. Their love, anger and grief come to life, as do those feelings in all of this novel’s central characters. The reader also grieves with Lucy, a young lady who was raped and is hoping for a distraction from the pity she had received by all the townspeople, her brother Alfred, a newer member of the Union trying to prove himself, and their friend Ida, who secretly loves Lucy but cannot act on it. The larger theme of this story is disappointment, which proves a complex theme worth exploring.
I was hoping for focus on the Chinese workers, and there is some in the person of Charles Sing. He is the novel’s most complex and compelling character, the foreman who speaks English and adopts much of Sampson’s methods and culture to be a success. This doesn’t sit well with a group of the workers under his authority, who seem content to work cheaply and live in a foreign land as long as they can still keep important cultural practices, such as burial rituals. And interestingly enough, the complaints don’t seem to increase until Julia Sampson leaves town for seven months and returns with a half-Chinese looking child.
North Adams’ handling of the Chinese laborers struck me as realistic. The church had Sunday School lessons teaching English to workers. There was a little turbulence from the Crispins, the Union that was on strike, but that was to be expected. There wasn’t much ugliness, and the laborers were treated like neighbors, and it wasn’t until Julia returned with the child that it threatened to change.
The central characters’ desires and disappointments intersect to bring this community to the point where the community begins to reevaluate the wisdom of the experiment. The Chinese workers, or at least a portion of them, seem to be having second thoughts about the implications of assimilation as well. Photos play a major part in this narrative as several characters plan photos that will present them as they want to be seen, or in some cases, others as they want them to be seen. Of course, as it turns out, intentions and results do not always match.
My only disappointment with this book stems from the title. It isn’t about the Celestials so much as it is about one of them. Charlie Sing is compelling and worthy of hours of discussion, but I can’t help feeling he doesn’t represent all of it. Some of the workers complained when Charlie assimilated, but others, not necessarily agreeing with him, worked in silence. What were they thinking or feeling? The author doesn’t tell us, and we don’t have enough information to guess. This isn’t their story; it’s Charlie’s.
This is a different book than I expected, in ways both smaller and bigger. I expected a glimpse into a community, or at best into two, but this is more of a family drama. On that level, Karen Shepard succeeds, laying bare feelings driving actions that are difficult to explain. There aren’t heroes or villains in this story, just broken people striving for what they want, and trying to relearn what that even means. Add to that a vivid background of a moment in history most of us don’t remember, and you have a rich insightful story deserving of attention and conversation.
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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