Interesting to see Asians, magic realism and a nonbinary/trans character in a Western. Pretty bleak and depressing, though -- difficult to wade through.

The dialogue contained Mandatin that was not translated, therefore the reader has to use the context to attempt to translate some meaning.

This book, sadly, was not for me.

Thank you to the publisher for my eARC copy of this book. Unfortunately I didn’t love this book and therefore didn’t finish, I just didn’t connect with this one. Not for me, sorry.

"You get lost again, you remember you belong to this place as much as anybody, Ba said. Don't be afeared of it. Ting Wo?"

A bit heavy handed at times with the symbolism, this is a beautiful tale of 2nd generation of Chinese-American siblings during the gold rush. It explores xenophonia, othering, feelings of displacement and the struggle to survive.

On one hand it was refreshing to read a different perspective of the gold rush experience. On the other hand, it was an uphill battle to get through all the long lyrical passages.

Otherall a well written debut novel but not for everyone.

Amazing description and atmosphere, really impressive all round. A little tough to follow in places but a fantastic debut overall

Set in the North American goldrush, How Much of These Hills is Gold is largely told through the perspectives of Lucy and Sam, 12 and 11-years old respectively. Their Ba is dead and, as the novel begins, they set out to bury him somewhere he might regard as home. The problem is that Ba never settled, always in pursuit of the gold that would make the family rich. This journey bookends the novel. In the middle, we get the story of the family, particularly that of Lucy’s education, followed by Ba’s ghost telling the true tale of how him and Ma met, rather than the version that’s become the family story.

The book’s concerned with who’s allowed to tell a story and how they choose to, or are allowed to, tell it. Ba’s section particularly serves as a corrective to the rich, white men’s tales of who found gold and who it belonged to. Zhang also considers race and gender. We would describe Sam as trans, and his story illustrates that trans people have been present (and erased from many narratives) for a long time. His trajectory, when contrasted to Lucy’s, highlights similarities and differences between the way they are treated.

The novel reinserts non-white people, specifically Chinese people and, to a lesser extent, indigenous North Americans, back into a part of history from which they’ve largely been erased, reasserting their agency and complexity. Zhang does all this while pulling off a page-turning, immersive story of the American West complete with cowboys, shooting, stealing, a rotting corpse and the question of what it means to be family. How Much of These Hills Is Gold is superb.

I really loved the concept of this book but unfortunately, I just didn't connect with the writing and found it hard to motivate myself to keep reading. There are some beautiful, lyrical passages and much to admire about the style but it just wasn't for me.

This novel has had a huge amount of praise and it's not hard to see why. It's unusual, refreshing and important. The writing style wasn't always to my taste, but it was an enjoyable read that deserves its acclaim.

Heartbreaking and beautiful. I could not stop reading and was desperate when it ended to know more about the characters. Such a clever book about perspectives and families. Every so often a different light would shine upon a character and you would have to rethink everything you thought you had understood. The depictions of the countryside and the gruelling lives being lived in it will stay with me for a long while. C Pam Zhang has written a timeless novel and I greatly look forward to reading her in the future. Thank you to Virago for providing me with this free ARC and wonderful experience.

This is the story of a family who come from ‘beyond the ocean’ and live as prospectors in the United States. The mixed fortunes of gold prospecting leads the children Lucy and Sam to undertake their own personal journeys as their Chinese mother and American father did before them. This is a beautiful novel about history, identity and immigration. C. Pam Zhang uses different point of views to carry the narrative and has an exquisite attention to detail. Gold is the literal and figurative vein that threads its way through this novel. It is the colour of the hills, the dust of the land, and the colour of Lucy’s eyes. An impressive debut.

This was a brilliant read! The writing was stunning, and absorbing. Would recommend to fans of literary fiction and those looking for lateral LGBTQ narratives.

A novel highlighting the hardships undergone by mining families during the Gold Rush. Two girls with completely different personalities affected by family tragedy, struggle to find their way through life despite their circumstances. A typical western type novel, not particularly gripping for me though i did finish it.

Thanks to the author and publishers for an ARC of this book.

I love Westerns and the Chinese community play a peripheral role in this genre, so I was highly intrigued by this book. The narration by different characters allowed the story to unfold gracefully.

A beautiful story and a gentle way of learning about another community.

I would read more by this author and seek to learn more about this neglected part of history.

If you've been following me for awhile you'll probably know that I love a Western. They're almost always overlooked, underappreciated and misunderstood. When you say 'Western' people automatically think ‘Cowboys and Indians,’ but there are other themes and characteristics that Westerns have going for them. Set in mid-1800s America they often focus on settlers who travel West in search of fortune, swept up in the Gold Rush and the dream of a better life for themselves and their families. But where there is gold there is trouble, and often bandits and outlaws abound. Rich prospectors lay claim to land, leaving many with little or no opportunity to make the fortune that they dreamed they would. Westerns are often heart wrenching stories of struggle, perseverance and survival.

‘How Much of These Hills is Gold' tells the story of a Chinese family following such a dream. At the start of the novel we meet two young siblings, Lucy and Sam, who have suddenly become orphaned and are forced to flee their home. Through a shifting timeline we learn about their history, the story of their parents, and the obstacles and discrimination which prevented their family from prospering during the Gold Rush. In their search for a new life for themselves, while trying to honour and reconcile their past, Lucy and Sam come up against many challenges, including those that they pose for each other.

In this debut novel the author's prose is almost dreamlike, incorporating Chinese words, phrases, symbolism and folklore. While the writing is often stunning, there were times when it felt to me like the plot was sacrificed for beautiful writing. Some parts were so overly descriptive or abstract that it wasn't clear what was actually happening to the characters, and ultimately that created a disconnect that meant that the story didn't quite pack the emotional punch that I expected and wanted from it. It had all the hallmarks of a book that would have me bawling my eyes out at the end but it just didn't happen. That said, it's certainly a fine debut and I'll be looking out for what Zhang writes next.

Sadly I struggled with this book.
I don't feel that it's appropriate giving it a full review and rating as I did not complete the book.

I just think I struggled to enjoy it because of the repetitive use of the characters names, it felt over descriptive. However, why this was the case came to light but it made me unable to read it sadly.
I think it there are people who suit the genre this would be excellent, however, I'm not the ideal audience

This is not your typical Western, although it set in the old Wild West. Lucy and Sam, two Chinese-American children, set off on their own to bury their father and to find the life that their mother wanted for them. Their father had gold fever and gambled their money away, their mother wanted an education and choices for her children - as well as somewhere safe to live. The fact that this story is based on two children alone is enough of an indicator that their parents wishes weren’t successful.

There are flashbacks to the life that they had prior to the death of their parents, and these really showed what a hard life gold prospecting and coal mining was - particularly if you weren’t seen as true Americans.

I loved this book - the descriptions of the landscape were stunning, the story of the difficult, uncertain lives the main characters experienced was at times heart-rending. I liked that we weren’t involved in the thought processes of their persecutors - we see everything from Lucy, Sam and their parents perspectives. We get a glimpse into the world of an immigrant family and of how little it seems to have changed with regards to attitudes.

I’d really recommend this book - it was a rewarding, if sad, read.

A sense of belonging and a deep ache for home is something that resides in all our hearts. Set during the Californian Gold Rush, two Chinese-American siblings, Lucy and Sam find themselves running from their new temporary home after the death of their father, a miner and a gold prospector. With them, they carry some essentials, a stolen horse and the dead body of their father in a battered trunk.

As these siblings travel through a dry and dreary land devoid of people and hopes, they encounter mysterious tiger paws and giant buffaloes, symbolic and fantastical. Lucy years for stability, a place to settle down and live a life she deserves, whereas Sam, who is a girl by gender but identifies herself as a boy, wants to wander and face the adventurous side of life.

This historical fiction that is set somewhere in the 1840s is woven through memories of days gone by, the tumultuous present and a future that we are unaware of. The Chinese immigrant experience with its gritty edges, gives us a story that is unforgettable, engrossing and spellbinding. The author fills our heads with the irony that has been a part of our society since a long time and that is, it is the immigrants who decide whether another immigrant family is suitable for their community and subject them to unspeakable horrors if they decide otherwise. Lucy and Sam's memories of the past gives us a dysfunctional family divided by the need to make money and their present speaks volumes on hostility and bias. At the end, it's all about survival and Lucy and Sam through this journey together, apart and together again try to find their true identity.

Described as 'ferocious, dark and gleaming' this debut is a sweeping tale of hope, family and history. With their Ma gone, and Ba dead, Lucy and sister Sam, find themselves completely alone in this world. Their life has been one of travel, of poverty, and of the search for home. Escaping the miner's shack they have lived in, they travel across mountainous trails to find a place to bury their father. Lucy longs to find a place to settle, to find a home and end their nomadic existence. Sam however, is restless and their paths are to take a detour from one another for five years. As the story moves back and forth, we learn about Ba and why he was so hard on his children. We learn that the constant search for gold has driven him, and the heartbreak when he struck gold, only to have it snatched away, was a pain so all consuming that there was no way back.

Original and darkly compelling, this is a debut that I'm sure will touch the hearts and minds of all who read it.

C. Pam Zhang’s debut, How Much of These Hills Is Gold, is set in California at the end of the Gold Rush of the 1850s. It explores the lives and histories of two young Chinese siblings, Lucy and Sam, as they struggle to survive after the deaths of both their parents. In this, it joins novels like Téa Obreht’s Inland and Philipp Meyer’s The Son in seeking to reimagine white, male myths of the American nineteenth-century ‘pioneer spirit’. The novel starts with the siblings fleeing their home with their Ba’s body packed into a trunk on the back of their mule; it then flashes back so that Ba can relate the last generation of their family’s history; and finally flashes forward five years to a time when Lucy, now seventeen, is trying to become a respectable young woman in town while an absent Sam lives feral.

Unlike some reviewers, I didn’t find this structure especially awkward – for me, the siblings’ futures and pasts were more interesting than their present, so I was glad that Zhang decided to deftly shake it up a bit – but still, this novel doesn’t quite fulfil its ambitions. Both Lucy and Sam are vividly imagined, and yet they’re never given enough space to become totally captivating. Sam’s contested relationship with gender is handled cleverly by Zhang – it can be difficult to position this kind of narrative in a historical setting, but I thought Zhang managed to create a space for Sam that felt like a kind of queer space that might have existed at the time, even though readers may continue to wonder what modern labels fit the character. However, as Elle points out in her review, Zhang’s refusal to commit to pronouns for Sam makes the writing clunky. Initially, I wondered if this represented Lucy’s own confusion about how to refer to Sam, but as we get sentences like ‘Sam’s hair… reaches just under Sam’s ears’ at the same time as Lucy continually refers to Sam as ‘her’, I didn’t understand why Zhang didn’t choose a set of pronouns, even if these changed later on in the book. The present tense also felt too much like a creative-writing class default setting rather than a deliberate choice. In short, How Much of These Hills Is Gold suffers, like many debut novels, from trying to pack too much into one story, but I’d much rather read something like this than a bland, competent book, and I’ll look out for more from Zhang. 3.5 stars.

A gorgeous, melancholy American epic, rich in glinting veins of imagery and language. Very much recommended.