Wuhu Diary

This is the story of Emily Prager's quest to discover more about her adopted daughter LuLu's past. When, in 1994, Prager first picked up LuLu at the Wuhu orphanage, she knew nothing about the baby's background, save that she had been found outside a police station. This book is set five years later, when Prager returns to China, planning to spend three months in the town. Her plan is complicated by NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and Prager suddenly finds herself stranded in the country as anti-American feeling burgeons all around. The book is not quite as tense or exciting as this might sound, although its events must have been fairly frightening to experience. As with much travel writing, the writing transforms painful or weird events into the safe and comfortable state of narrative. In fact, Wuhu Diary is heart-warming, in a surprisingly powerful and not at all sickly way. Prager's account is detailed and observant, and the picture of her daughter that emerges is particularly charming. Seen through her (adopted) mother's eyes, LuLu comes across as intelligent, energetic and vivacious. This slim book is an amalgam of genres. Prager, a practised journalist and novelist, weaves together a memoir in which she recalls her much disrupted childhood in Taiwan with her reflections on her complex relationship with her daughter and her observations on Chinese culture. On this last, Prager's vision, though decidedly that of an outsider, is also optimistic. Ultimately, it is hard not to care about the mother and daughter's quest, and the experience of following it is both interesting and strangely reassuring. (Kirkus UK)