Reviews

This book feels epic yet intimate in scope. The action moves along at a good clip &, in a way, seems like a soap opera with each chapter having new action or some event. I enjoyed it, the mix of fiction/allegory/history. I think my only (very minor) quibble was that you had a male author writing a female main character & I sometimes had an indistinct & fleeting impression of noticing that.

cais's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“And what was more, she could never tell which memory particle would sting the soft places in her heart, make her cheeks scald and her eyes brim with tears, just as the gray embers of the winter hearth do not announce which one of them can still burn your fingers.”

In an interview, Ge Fei praised Canaan Morse’s translation highly, calling it “very lucid & charming.” I agree. As charming & frequently funny as this story is, it’s also often brutal. Some scenes get really fucking rough. But for all the violence, there’s also sweetness, bittersweetness, love & tenderness. The entire spectrum of human experience seems to exist in this extraordinary book.

Ge Fei is such a masterful writer, somehow he is able to convey a truly epic tale while still making it feel very intimate. His prose is alive, eloquent, vividly conjuring up people, places & moods from page one. This story went in directions way beyond what I expected, but none of the turns ever feels contrived. Despite being written by a man, this book feels very female. While men are dreaming of & fighting over how to build Utopia, what role do women play? Just a pretext for male violence?

In telling the story of Xiumi, who starts off as a somewhat spoiled & spirited young girl, the story of the collapse of dynastic rule in China is also told. All the good & bad deeds, grand dreams, delusions, power grabs & motives, from bloodthirst to a desire for equality, tend to be seen as one unified movement. But through Xiumi, her family & their neighbors, we see the individuals behind closed doors, everyday life amidst plans & schemes. We see women treated as property, discarded carelessly, succumbing to circumstance, forging new lives, accepting their limitations & losses, trying to find some peace in their world. Ge Fei has created a historical narrative that is fresh, compelling & gorgeously lyrical. I was completely captivated by this book, though the emotion of it all did hang heavy for a while after finishing.

megnland's review against another edition

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4.0

I enjoyed this book and think I got something genuinely valuable from reading it, but the portrayal of sexual violence against women and children tainted some of its value for me. This was especially frustrating because the women in the book are complex and interesting. They have often experienced sexual violence (as is realistic, especially in times of power transitions) and are impacted by this experience, but not necessarily defined by it. I felt somewhat recognized and empathetically seen in some of these portions of the book. But the book wavers too much between portraying the lives of women and the experience of sexual violence as being an all too commonplace atrocity and deeming scenes of sexual assault and pedophilia as some simply inevitable, unavoidable "deviancy" that can be laughed off as the actions of the misguided, lost people that populate the book.

These parts were difficult to read because I think something of value actually *was* being said through the presence of sexual violence in the book. The hypocrisy of many so-called leftist revolutionaries who turn around and violate women and children, and the way in which various people take up the mantle of revolutionary politics only to use it to exert power over others is worth exploring, and I think was explored well. I also didn't hate the somewhat bemused, light-heartedly bitter tone of the book. I, too, think people often ridiculously, stoically, carry out the exact mistakes of those that came before them. Still, I was disappointed with the neutrality of the book, seeming to condemn everyone in the book equally, in searching for something unattainable, while missing the uniquely horrific hurt caused by perpetrators of sexual violence. The book sank back a little too far in comfortable neutrality and missed the mark on what could have been a bit more nuanced portrayal of human mistakes and the difficult attempt to cultivate 'progress' which is not always clear.