Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
By: Grace Lin / Narrated By: Janet Song
Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
Ignore the wandering mind and stick with this little gem!
I wasn’t sure I was going to like Where the Mountain Meets the Moon as I’d listened to Starry River of the Sky before and, while I liked it okay enough, I felt that it was mostly a string of old Chinese stories strung together to make a semi-cohesive “new” story. It was rather a disappointment, to be honest, so WAH! for that…
But as with the latter audiobook, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon starts off lyrically enough as tho’ an old fable were being told. We meet young Minli and her Ma and Ba as they traverse life on Fruitless Mountain, barely eking out an existence though they work so hard. Minli loves to hear Ba tell stories… and this drives Ma nuts: After all, stories don’t make life better; they don’t put any more rice in their bowls. She berates Ba, but he persists—Minli loves the stories, they fire her imagination, and they feed her soul. And Ba has such stories to tell, stories where rivers come together and life DOES get better.
But Ma grumbles and is peeved about their poor fortunes. So when a traveling salesman comes by with goldfish that can change fortunes, Minli quickly uses some of her birth money to buy one.
But Ma says the family has nothing, not even enough to feed a goldfish, and Minli has to set the creature free in a river. And that is the last straw for Minli: She WILL find the Old Man on the Moon, who she’s heard of through Ba’s tales, and she will ask him how to change her family’s fortunes.
Thus begins her journey, and thus began my headache. There are sooo many characters she meets, and they all have at least one story to tell, a story which comPLETEly halts the narrative in its tracks so we can get to the lyrical telling of what seems to be an ancient Chinese fable/myth or some such thing. My eyes started glazing over but, dear Accomplice, I went on! I am NOT one of those people who writes a review based on a partial listening with the statement: Couldn’t finish it, but I’m going to be all touchy based on only the bit I listened to.
And wouldn’t ya know it? Things started to come together at the end in SUCH a clever and beguiling way that I was totally mesmerized and even got chills as I trundled along in the Central Texas heat: It just got to be THAT good! Every single, tiny, itty bitty bit of an element was woven through, and I found myself excitedly recognizing things and laughing aloud. It was WONderful, and I truly applaud Ms. Lin for her cleverness and her sensitivity. There were happy endings galore, and I was truly delighted.
Janet Song does a really good job and narrates this with a sort of solemnity and dignity that suits the material. Other reviewers stated that her narration was smooth, oh so smooooth, tooo smoooooth, sooo smooooth they damned near fell asleep. Hmm, well okay, I can kinda sorta see that: She DOES have a gentle way of delivering the stories/tales and, as there are a LOT of them, like I said, my eyes glazed over. But all in all, especially as I got to the end, her voice got lively and vibrant as each character’s journey was wrapped up and as old myths came together.
Okay, okay. So maybe not a PERFECT review for this audiobook, what with glazed-over eyeballs and the aching head in the middle, but still! I gotta tell ya! What a fantastic and creative way for things to end!
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.