Pandemic-set novels are on the increase now the requisite time to write has passed, and unsurprisingly, they tend towards the sombre and thoughtful. In Burrow, Cheng gives us a family who've throughly dug themselves in to paralysing grief, so that the lockdown comes as a relief that the world has moved closer to their state. But while parents Jin and Amy are caught into a cycle of avoidance and numbness after the accidental death of their second child, their tween Lucie is pushing forward, as children do, into change. And so, they get a pet.
Given this description, you've probably guessed, correctly, that the pet (and another unexpected arrival) kicks off some kind of healing process for the family. And you are also probably assuming it is slightly mawkish, which would be wrong. The trick here is not in an unexpected destination but in the journey. Cheng maintains a subdued gentle tone throughout, revelling in the moments. It might not be explicable, the book shows, that a bunny jumping can make us feel joy, and it may be fleeting, but it matters. This family don't wrap all their issues up in neat bows - and in changing perspectives, Cheng uses changes of perspective to show how rarely our attempts to connect land as expected. But this is a testament to how we connect at all, in the face of how hard that can be.
(I found parts of this book quite difficult at times. I have a beloved child of the same age in my life, and found it surprisingly difficult to read scenes where her parents were unable to give her what she needed. I found myself googling afterwards to try to reassure myself that Cheng was not writing auto-fiction (in interviews, Cheng says the idea came from imagining her worst fears, not experiencing them).)
I found Cheng's debut collection a little uneven, and skipped her first novel. But here is a powerful voice telling an immersive story in a slight premise. Her caustic wit remains - Jin describes the experience of living in the inner-city when he is from western suburbs as feeling like "the newest guest at a never-ending dinner party". Honestly, there is nothing it feels like Cheng couldn't take on and make it interesting - I'll be grabbing that first novel now.