“Maynard is a skillful and evocative writer … there is more to Isabelle's story than merely growing up during two turbulent decades of China's history. Without disrupting the delicate web of her narrative, the author subtly indicates the larger shene: the still largely unexplored history of the Russian Jewish community in China… Isabelle Maynard's book is a rich and welcome contribution to a growing shelf of China memoirs.”—Studies in Contemporary Jewry
“Today, in the Chinese city of Tianjin, the little world inhabited by thousands of Europeans half a century ago is still visible. The buildings remain, but for the people you must turn to the fascinating memoir by Isabelle Maynard of growing up in this mixed foreign community. Here you will find the German Jewish refugee still in shell shock after losing all his family and possessions in Nazi Germany, the eccentric British neighbor with her apartment full of books, the boisterous Russian Orthodox friends who, full of vodka, burst into anti-Semitic songs, the maudlin French widow giving language lessons, the American school friend who comes in an embassy car. Oddly missing, though, are the Chinese, no more than vague shadows hovering in the background of this strange lost world.”—R. David Arkush, University of Iowa
“This is a fascinating memoir, not only because it introduces us to yet another of the versatile and durable Jewish communities that have thrived in unlikely places, but because Isabelle Maynard is a sensitive, funny, and frequently moving chronicler of childhood and adolescence. She was an unsparing eye and emotional exactness, herChina Dreams brings us into a world we could never have imagined without her uncanny guidance.”—Rosellen Brown, author of Before and After