Shanghailanders

A Novel

By: Juli Min

Narrated by: Mei Mei Macleod

A dazzling and ambitious debut novel that follows a cosmopolitan Shanghai household backward in time—beginning in 2040 and moving through our present and the recent past—exploring their secrets, their losses, and the ways a family makes and remakes itself across the years.

2040: Wealthy real estate investor Leo Yang—handsome, distinguished, a real Shanghai man—is on the train back to the city after seeing his family off at the airport. His sophisticated Japanese-French wife, Eko, and their two eldest children, Yumi and Yoko, are headed for Boston, though one daughter’s revelation will soon reroute them to Paris. 2039: Kiko, their youngest daughter and an aspiring actress, decides to pursue fame at any cost, like her icon Marilyn Monroe. 2038: Yumi comes to Yoko in need, after a college-dorm situation at Harvard goes disastrously wrong.

As the years rewind to 2014, Shanghailanders brings listeners into the shared and separate lives of the Yang family parent by parent, daughter by daughter, and through the eyes of the people in their orbit—a nanny from the provinces, a private driver with a penchant for danger, and a grandmother whose memories of the past echo the present. We glimpse a future where the city’s waters rise and the specter of apocalypse is never far off. But in Juli Min’s hands, we also see that whatever may change, universal constants remain: love is complex, life is not fair, and family will always be stubbornly connected by blood, secrets, and longing.

Brilliantly constructed and achingly resonant, Shanghailanders is an unforgettable exploration of marriage, relationships, and the layered experience of time.

©2024 Juli Min (P)2024 Spiegel & Grau by Spotify Audiobooks

The timeline

I had a hard time with this read. I never felt compelled to listen, it just didn’t draw me in.

A little confusing going back and forth in time but not too hard to follow

The ending left me hanging, thinking I had forwarded through part of the book between sessions. I might replay it to be sure.

Beautiful winding journey backwards in time

Thought the narration was incredible and enjoyed the way the characters came to life. There were certain chapters, like the one from the perspective of the ayi, which will stay with me for a long time.