The Leavers

A Novel

By: Lisa Ko

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller

One morning, Deming Guo's mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her. With his mother gone, 11-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. They rename him Daniel Wilkinson in their efforts to make him over into their version of an "all-American boy". But far away from all he's ever known, Daniel struggles to reconcile his new life with his mother's disappearance and the memories of the family and community he left behind. Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid and moving examination of borders and belonging. It's the story of how one boy comes into his own when everything he's loved has been taken away - and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of her past.

©2017 Lisa Ko (P)2017 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Great book and solid performance!

Great performance and a great book! Learned how to pronounce some Chinese words from it as well.

The book itself is a good example of the power of books to show us different lives and experiences. I could never claim to know Chinese American culture after reading this, but it did manage to broaden my understanding just a bit.

Ko is a wonderful writer also. She strings together words with a deft yet warm precision.

Mind-Boggling Intensity of Life

You will experience all sorts of mixed emotions..angry, sad, unforgiving, forgiveness. resolution, to the characters awaking to be be oneself.

Life is complicated

In Audible form, it was hard to keep track of how the story jumped and ooped around back and forth but it kept me interested enough to back up and relisten when necessary.

As the daughter of an immigrant from Japan, I felt the pain and frustration of Deming and his mother. Some characters were too one-dimensional but served their purpose.

Looking forward to reading the next Lisa Ko novel.

Narration Off-Putting

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The Narrator

Was The Leavers worth the listening time?

Debatable

Any additional comments?

The story was a slow starter but became more interesting as it unfolded. The narration was a huge detractor - women are read in tense voices ever on the verge of anxious hysteria and men are read in cartoonish voices. Might be better enjoyed the old fashioned way.

It’s an excellent read

The story held my attention, and when the characters are sad or happy, I felt the same. I felt the author wrote the story realistically, and the narrator’s tones draw me into the book.

The Prose is strong...

The narrator is overly dramatic and destroys the prose in her performance. Sort of like: chewing the scenery.

Reader wasn't loud enough

The story is exceptional but ruined by the reader whose whispered tone and selected overdramatizations were distracting and hard to follloe

Excessively dramatic reading and writing

This was a good story idea, but the characters were fairly one-dimensional and many felt excessively tragic. Narration was overdramatic without enough variation in intensity. I stayed with the book because I cared about the main characters, and the important themes in the book- immigration, family disruption, adoption, racism, young adult development and challenges, and identity.

Would make an excellent movie

I kept imagining the book as a movie. It was a little drawn out sometimes but provided a beautiful and nuanced coming of age story of immigration and transracial adoption that we are rarely told.

The Leavers

Intense subject matter. Enjoyed learning about the main characters as the author switched back and forth between the present time and past. Focused on themes of separation, loneliness, and starting over in life.