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A Novel
by Allison King
In this dazzling debut novel, a hidden and nearly forgotten magic—of Reforging pencils, bringing the memories they contain back to life—holds the power to transform a young woman's relationship with her grandmother, and to mend long-lost connections across time and space.
Monica Tsai spends most days on her computer, journaling the details of her ordinary life and coding for a program that seeks to connect strangers online. A self-proclaimed recluse, she's always struggled to make friends and, as a college freshman, finds herself escaping into a digital world, counting the days until she can return home to her beloved grandparents. They are now in their nineties, and Monica worries about them constantly—especially her grandmother, Yun, who survived two wars in China before coming to the States, and whose memory has begun to fade.
Though Yun rarely speaks of her past, Monica is determined to find the long-lost cousin she was separated from years ago. One day, the very program Monica is helping to build connects her to a young woman, whose gift of a single pencil holds a surprising clue. Monica's discovery of a hidden family history is exquisitely braided with Yun's own memories as she writes of her years in Shanghai, working at the Phoenix Pencil Company. As WWII rages outside their door, Yun and her cousin, Meng, learn of a special power the women in their family possess: the ability to Reforge a pencil's words. But when the government uncovers their secret, they are forced into a life of espionage, betraying other people's stories to survive.
Combining the cross-generational family saga and epistolary form of A Tale for the Time Being with the uplifting, emotional magic of The Midnight Library, Allison King's stunning debut novel asks: who owns and inherits our stories? The answers and secrets that surface on the page may have the unerasable power to reconnect a family and restore a legacy.
What are you reading this week? (7/10/2025)
...eelings in it. Heartbreak,awe, excitement. The writing is well done and the characters are so believable. The second book,again,I highly recommend is The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King. Wow! This is a mix of historical and magical realism. So interesting.
-Brenda_Wychock
"Remarkable...Part speculative, part multigenerational family epic, part historical record, part coming-of-age romance, it is, like the mythical titular phoenix, all magic...King radiantly explores memory, storytelling, archiving, history, and the subjective unreliability of all that we think we know." —Booklist (starred review)
"Powerful...[A] poignant magical realist tale that's sure to find fans." —Publishers Weekly
"Software engineer King demonstrates a compelling voice in both literary historical fiction and technological stories with her first novel...King unifies complex topics into a gripping narrative, exploring tensions amid memory, privacy, history, and technology." —Library Journal
"I loved this wildly inventive novel and its exploration of how technology and humanity can intersect in deeply meaningful ways. Allison King is a talent to watch." —Liz Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The God of the Woods
"China, America, generations, and stories connect with literal magic in this suspenseful debut. Marvelous!" —Gish Jen, award-winning author of The Resisters
"The Phoenix Pencil Company is a masterful blending of history, fantasy, and romance that sank into my heart the way the magic of its pencils sinks into veins. King has written a stunning debut that pulses with love and loss, regret and forgiveness, and above all, the undeniable, painful, joyful pull of human connection. This book had me smiling through my tears." —Fonda Lee, author of the Green Bone Saga
This information about The Phoenix Pencil Company was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Allison King is an Asian American writer and software engineer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In technology, her work has ranged from semiconductors to platforms for community conversations to data privacy. Her short stories have appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Diabolical Plots, and LeVar Burton Reads, among others. She is a 2023 Reese's Book Club LitUp fellow. The Phoenix Pencil Company is her first novel.
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