Shanghailanders | Juli Min

This book caught my eye in the NY Times Book Review largely because of the format. It's chronological, only backwards. It covers the time period of the future 2040, until the recent past in 2014. So you get the back story after you've read the story itself. It's an intriguing idea, right? The book tells the story of a wealthy Chinese family with seemingly loving parents and two, often exasperating daughters. Naturally there's a lot of back story (otherwise, it wouldn't be written in this upside-down format).

I can't say I loved this book, although the format was interesting. The writing was good, and it touched just enough on what we all know about recent Chinese history to be impactful. Unfortunately I kept kind of losing track of the story so the back story wasn't always as enlightening as I'm sure Min would have liked. Maybe I was just distracted while I was reading it? It could happen.