Nanaville summary

Feeding, diapering, reading, singing, lifting, cuddling, loving, and sometimes chastizing – so much of motherhood is in the active present tense. Being a mom means doing. No wonder it’s so hard to take a back seat when your kids get older and start carving their own path through life!

Things get even tougher when you’re a grandmother. By now, you’re a grizzled veteran. You’ve seen it all. You know what’s what, and it shows in the way you think and talk. “That baby is hungry.” “That baby needs Motrin.” “That baby should sleep more.” 

Wo ai ni, sunzi. That’s Mandarin for “I love you, Grandson,” and they’re the first words Anna learned in that language. But before we get to that, let’s rewind back to before Anna was a grandmother. 

Here’s the key message: Nanaville isn’t about what you have to do; it’s about what you want to do. 

Quin is the kind of guy who knows stuff. Moby Dick, popular music, Chinese history – you name it, he’s got the answers. He’s analytical, meticulous, and logical. There’s a reason he wears a T-shirt with the slogan “Grammar police: to correct and serve.” 

These are great qualities, but Anna wondered how compatible they were with the chaos of raising a child. Quin wondered that, too. For a long time, he was against the idea – kids, he said, just weren’t his bag. His mother had long thought the same way. In her twenties, she read a book called The Baby Trap, a 1970s manifesto for the “childfree movement.” For a long time, she cherished the freedom of childlessness and hated the idea of having her wings clipped. 

It’s not just the advice doctors give expectant mothers that’s changed over the decades – childrearing in general is a different ballgame. 

Take Anna’s parents. In their day, things were uncomplicated. You had kids and got on with it. Entertainment meant sending your children to go out and play, and the closest you got to an educational toy was your younger brother or sister. Shoes and school clothes were hand-me-downs, and the teacher was always right, especially if she happened to be a cane-wielding nun. 

When Arthur was born, his doctor flipped him onto his stomach and showed his parents their baby’s bottom. A patch the size of an adult hand and the color of a stormy sky spread across his buttocks. The pediatrician explained that this was known as a Mongolian blue spot – a birthmark common among Asian babies. 

The point wasn’t just to reassure Arthur’s mom and dad that everything was fine. Blue spots are often mistaken for a sign of abuse in communities unfamiliar with Asian babies, so it was important that Quin and Lynn could explain what it was.