“In these linked stories about Hong Kong Jess Row has been able to locate the very heart of modern spirituality in this most commercial of cities. Buddhist monks and nuns, proud lovers, failed painters, the haunted daughter of a suicidal mother, a philosopher--all of these people living on the edge have found their way to Hong Kong. The East and the West, sure--but also the sacred and the profane. The writing is surgical in the sense that an ancient Chinese butcher who had attained enlightenment could prepare various cuts without ever touching the meat; his knife passed effortlessly though the natural spaces, just as Row’s pen articulates even the strangest, most elusive feelings without distorting them. This is a debut that feels like a crowning achievement.”
— Edmund White
“In crystalline prose, Row animates intriguing characters and dramatizes subtle yet emblematic conflicts as he traces the vast cultural divides between America and Hong Kong...He neatly and devastatingly contrasts dueling visions of faith, art, love, and freedom.”
— Booklist
“From New York to Hong Kong, Jess Rows stories take us to worlds that are both familiar and strange. It is rare to find the spirit and mind combined so deftly as in these stories. This is a magnificent collection.”
— Charles Baxter
“In sharp, lucid prose, Row molds a landscape of human error and uncertainty, territory well-aligned with the eerie topography of his space-age city.”
— Publisher’s Weekly
“These seven short stories about Hong Kong people by a young American writer are not only subtle, skilful, and above all exceptionally thoughtful: They could well be the finest fiction ever to have appeared in English about the city. It’s no exaggeration to say that The Train to Lo Wu is comparable in many ways with James Joyce’s Dubliners, equally disillusioned stories about another city where things are not always what they seem.”
—Taipei Times
“Jess Row’s The Train to Lo Wu leaves me almost speechless...Many writers have managed to describe Hong Kong, but few have as a deft a touch with the Hong Kong people, real people, with the cadences of Hong Kong English, with the gestures, body language and internal contradictions of the people of this place...Row, who taught at Chinese University from 1997 to 1999, seems to have captured in this short time what it is about Hong Kong that makes this city so frustrating, yet also so hard for so many of us to leave.”
—The Asian Review of Books
“Over and over, these beautifully crafted stories drew me in with their quietly persuasive voices, their meditative detail, and their subtly heart-rending plots. An auspicious debut from a talent set to endure.”
— Peter Ho Davies
“An impressive debut from an admirably protean storyteller...Row’s characters are a mixed bunch, but all are effortlessly convincing, and he handles gritty suspense quite as well as he does the problems of lovers. This Whiting Award-winning author has a very bright future.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Row’s stories are subtle...and fascinating.”
— Entertainment Weekly
“Jess Row writes with elegance and freshness in prose that sounds a depth of feeling. These stories are poems in themselves, haunting in their clarity and sympathies. They achieve a kind of stillness that seems appropriate for their Chinese setting. I can hardly imagine a more forceful or memorable debut.”
— Jay Parini