The title and Ma’s name are ruffled too, as if the author herself were shrink-wrapping delicious pleasure into a denatured product. On the cover of “Bliss Montage,” clear plastic clings to the nubbled curves of oranges, suffocating all that sunshine-y zing. Ma tells us what it looks like because she knows it matters. It’s a story collection “with a vaguely Chinese cover image of persimmons in a Ming dynasty bowl.” The image implies tradition and delicacy, pretty stories of domestic imbalance and clichéd Eastern promises of good fortune.
In “Peking Duck,” one of the standout stories in Ling Ma’s collection, “ Bliss Montage,” a young writer presents an early copy of her new book to her mother. One of my former editors once told me not to mention a book’s cover in a review - that it cheapened the words inside by tying them to the work of the publicity and marketing buzzards. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.
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