Allison King grew up hearing bedtime stories from her grandmother – tales of Chinese classics and family lore that planted the seeds of her debut novel, The Phoenix Pencil Company. Late at night, a young Allison listened wide-eyed as her grandmother sometimes veered from myth to memory. Those intimate storytelling moments between a grandmother and her granddaughter became the heart of Allison’s novel, a literary saga suffused with memory, magical realism, and the legacy of love passed down through generations. A Reese's pick for her book club, The Phoenix Pencil Company is out now!
MEMORY AND FAMILY LEGACY
The Phoenix Pencil Company was inspired in large part by the history she inherited, and nearly lost. ‘I had the great fortune of being raised by my grandparents,’ Allison reflects, emphasizing the warmth and closeness that shaped her upbringing. Her grandmother, Yun, would enchant her with stories, from classic folklore to real family anecdotes. One recurring tale was about the pencil company her family once ran in Taiwan; a legacy that fascinated Allison as a child. Allison’s grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when Allison was still young, and the rich memories she once shared slowly began to fade. ‘By the time I was old enough to wonder about her past, her memory of it was gone,’ Allison recalls.
Determined not to let that history die, Allison sought ways to preserve and reimagine it. After her grandparents passed, she even turned to technology to bridge the gap. She helped create a website for members of the Taiwanese diaspora to share their stories, collecting scattered pieces of cultural memory.
In Allison’s view, storytelling became a way to salvage what time and illness had eroded. ‘I helped build a website where people of the Taiwanese diaspora could share their stories. Even in technology, my interests were circling stories and how they’re passed on’, she notes.
MAGICAL REALISM AND THE INTIMACY OF STORYTELLING
Unable to recover the real memories, she chose to create memories on the page, infusing them with a touch of magic. The novel’s premise itself is an act of intimate storytelling: in wartime Shanghai, young Yun (inspired by Allison’s grandmother) and her cousin discover they have the uncanny ability to ‘Reforge’ pencils – to draw out the words and memories written with them and bring those stories back to life. Through this gentle, magical realism, Allison bridges past and present, using fantasy as a means to explore very real truths. As she explains, ‘[Fiction] allowed me the freedom to fictionalise, turn historical reality into fantasy, and to add magic to the pencils she was making.’
What makes the magic in Allison’s novel especially poignant is how closely it mirrors the act of sharing stories between generations. The relationship between Monica (the modern-day granddaughter in the book) and Yun is interwoven with letters, journals, and remembered tales, blurring the line between history and myth.
In a literary sense, The Phoenix Pencil Company asks, as Allison’s debut boldly does, who owns and inherits our stories? The answer it suggests is that stories belong to all those who remember and share them – an inheritance passed down like a treasured pencil, sharpened anew by each generation.
TECHNOLOGY AND EMOTIONAL ISOLATION
Set partly in the digital age, The Phoenix Pencil Company also grapples with the promises and pitfalls of technology in preserving human connection. Monica Tsai, the novel’s present-day protagonist, is a college freshman who spends her days coding a program meant to connect strangers online. Through Monica, Allison portrays a modern paradox – in an era of constant connectivity, one can still feel profoundly alone. Monica’s software project, intended to bring people together, ultimately cannot substitute for the tangible bond she has with her family.
Allison’s dual perspective as both writer and software engineer lends authenticity to these themes. She has seen how technology can amplify voices and also how it can distance us from each other. In her career, as in her novel, the human need for storytelling remains central.
A BOND ACROSS GENERATIONS
Ultimately, The Phoenix Pencil Company is a tribute to the bond between a grandmother and granddaughter – a love strong enough to transcend decades, wars, and even memory loss. ‘But at its core, it is a book about a granddaughter who loves her grandmother very much, and all the magic that can come from that deep a bond,’ Allison says. That abiding affection is the novel’s emotional compass. Every element – the magic pencils, the secret family history, the online search for lost relatives – circles back to the tenderness between Monica and Yun.
In fiction, Allison grants her characters a chance to do what she could not in life: recover the stories of the older generation before they disappear. It is a story of inheritance, not of money or objects, but of meaning – the inheritance of identity and experience that flows from elders to the young if only we take the time to listen.
And now, as Allison King sends her debut out into the world, she hopes it forges new connections with readers. ‘It is a joy to imagine this book travelling the world, maybe doing for readers what my grandmother did for me — sharing the stories and wonders of a long-lost pencil company.’
Words Harita Odedara
24.06.2025