Corinna Chong
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order online from NeWest Press
Also available from:
  • amazon.ca
  • Chapters/Indigo
  • Read Local Okanagan

Advance Praise for Belinda's Rings

"Quirky and deeply felt, Belinda's Rings draws obsessive circles around the human heart, revealing the raw connections between mothers and daughters, wives and husbands. Chong's voice is fresh and soulful."
        –Eden Robinson

"Belinda's Rings is about childhood and adolescence and sisters and mothers and piano lessons, but it’s also about UFOs and mysterious squids and stunningly beautiful crop circles near Stonehenge. The writing has a mesmerising grace and an Atwoodian fascination with science and swirling fractals and deep sea divers and puzzling family bonds. Belinda's Rings is a vital vibrant gem."
        –Mark Anthony Jarman

Belinda's Rings  (Order from NeWest Press, or your local bookstore)

Named by Salty Ink as one of the finest four novels from the first half of 2013
Half-Asian teenager Grace (but she’d prefer it if you called her “Gray” instead) is dead set on becoming a marine biologist rather than being anything like her mother, Belinda. She’d leave that role to her sister Jess instead, who’s a supermom-in-the-making.

Belinda herself is somewhat obsessed as well, by crop circle books and imagery, and abruptly runs out on her family, flying across the Atlantic in order to study the real thing in the English countryside. Grace and her sister are left alone to take care of the house, their rapidly-deteriorating stepfather, and their peculiar little brother, Squid.

​Belinda’s Rings weaves together the coming-of-age of a young biracial woman with the mid-life crisis of her mother. With warmth, kindness and a boisterous sense of humour, Corinna Chong introduces us to two loveable and thoroughly original female protagonists: persnickety, precocious Grace, and her impractical, impulsive mother, Belinda—very different women who nevertheless persistently circle back into each other’s hearts.
         
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Selected Reviews

Reading in Bed: Review by Laura Frey
Stunning debut. Unflinching. Courageous. [...] Corinna Chong is a startling new talent on the CanLit scene, and I can’t wait to see what she’ll do next. (full review)
The Globe and Mail: Review by Chad Pelley
[...] as vibrant as it is original [...] the story succeeds in capturing family tensions, and the bonds that trump those tensions. The cast and folly in Belinda’s Rings is a great recipe for an offbeat summer read. (full review)
Tuck Magazine: Review by Val B. Russell
As a debut novel, Belinda’s Rings is far above average. Original and quirky. Corinna Chong has created something special with this book [...]. (full review)
The Fiddlehead: Review by Rebecca Geleyn
Belinda's and Grace's separate interests stock the novel with marvellous displays of the florid patterns in crop circles and the unnerving qualities of certain sea species. [...] Chong's prose flows so seamlessly that it is easy to overlook the novel's careful structure of interweaving stories. [...] Grace's character is real, her voice is fresh and colourful, and she proves to be a real teenager and a charmingly unreliable narrator. [...] A novel subtly charged with emotion, Belinda's Rings is unmistakably a noteworthy read." (full review)
Quill and Quire: Review by Dana Hansen
Chong's talent is undeniable. [...] her future in CanLit is assured. (full review)
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  • Bio
  • Belinda's Rings
    • Reviews
  • The Whole Animal
  • CV
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