In a failing city, a government program incentivizes couples to surgically attach themselves to one another, promising a flourishing economy, ecological revitalization, and personal fulfillment. Hon Lai Chu's unnamed narrator, living with a friend who may be the love of her life, is broke and knee-deep in her dissertation, and in her struggles, she begins to lose her sense of self. With all of the pressures of society's expectations and those of her close friends, she worries that maybe they are right when they tell her it would be easier, for the good of another person and for the good of the country, to sacrifice everything that she is.
Hon Lai Chu, one of the most important writers working in Hong Kong today, sets her characters loose in a world where even the motives of those you love most are shaped by larger forces. Mending Bodies, translated by Jacqueline Leung, challenges our safe understandings of our bodies and our governments.
