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jcol's review
5.0
"We die, governments change, ideologies evolve, borders disappear, rivers merge, islands sink, trees rot, bones dissolve, even nature expires one day. But the universe exists, with stars or without stars, with air or without air, infinitely and unimaginably beyond man. I know that the infinite world is there beyond trivial ideologies or politics. And we only have one life to live."
A powerful book.
A powerful book.
obione_tdg's review against another edition
2.0
Again one of the countless books that wants to spread the propagandistic and racist idea that everything about the United States is the best possible and everything related to China is shit and inferior. And it is really a pity because it makes almost unreadable a novel which, at least in the first part, is quite intriguing (in spite of beein unrealistic).
vanessaglau's review against another edition
4.0
In the bookshop, the pretty blue cover and strong title spoke to me first. Next was the blurb which is intriguing, but doesn't do the book justice, as I've learned later.
The writing style is simple and sober which matches the protagonist's voice very well. Iona seems to be a disillusioned woman who loses herself in translation work by day and has sex with strangers by night. Some sentences or paragraphs sounded a little artificial because they violated the 'show don't tell' rule. In some cases they were necessary to move the story along, in some cases not. Iona seems detached from the world and estranged, she looks at everyday matters with confusion. That state of mind is familiar to me, so I saw the loneliness behind her facade and was intrigued immediately.
The story focuses the Chinese lovers Mu and Jian, united in their love for art and poetry in a rigidly political and conformist society, as told through their letters and journals. Both of them have their distinct voice and handwriting (as seen through occasional photos in the book - I love the idea!), Jian confident and determined, Mu more thoughtful and sensitive. The way their story is linked with Chinese politics, the educated yet hopeless youth and struggle of the arts in China fascinated me throughout the entire book. In the end their conflicts become a matter of national (even international) importance. I'm not sure if the scale isn't too big for a love story so deep and personal, but it certainly upped the stakes and added suspense towards the end of the book.
Iona's story is hidden between their words and harder to interpret. I'm still not sure how to read the last scene despite having a few ideas. Still, her mental evolution compliments Jian and Mu's physical journey nicely. The book wouldn't be complete without Iona's conflict and I loved how it highlighted the power of stories, communication and intercultural exchange. Everything we read influences what we think and, eventually, how we act. That is precisely why translation is such important work.
Like I already mentioned, the characters spoke to me personally (because I'm interested in language, translation and China myself), but their love, their desire to be heard and understood and their loneliness touched me on a more universal level. I think this book carries an important message - that as well as the emotional stories wrapped into a small neat package is what makes it worth reading. And reading again (I know I will).
The writing style is simple and sober which matches the protagonist's voice very well. Iona seems to be a disillusioned woman who loses herself in translation work by day and has sex with strangers by night. Some sentences or paragraphs sounded a little artificial because they violated the 'show don't tell' rule. In some cases they were necessary to move the story along, in some cases not. Iona seems detached from the world and estranged, she looks at everyday matters with confusion. That state of mind is familiar to me, so I saw the loneliness behind her facade and was intrigued immediately.
The story focuses the Chinese lovers Mu and Jian, united in their love for art and poetry in a rigidly political and conformist society, as told through their letters and journals. Both of them have their distinct voice and handwriting (as seen through occasional photos in the book - I love the idea!), Jian confident and determined, Mu more thoughtful and sensitive. The way their story is linked with Chinese politics, the educated yet hopeless youth and struggle of the arts in China fascinated me throughout the entire book. In the end their conflicts become a matter of national (even international) importance. I'm not sure if the scale isn't too big for a love story so deep and personal, but it certainly upped the stakes and added suspense towards the end of the book.
Iona's story is hidden between their words and harder to interpret. I'm still not sure how to read the last scene despite having a few ideas. Still, her mental evolution compliments Jian and Mu's physical journey nicely. The book wouldn't be complete without Iona's conflict and I loved how it highlighted the power of stories, communication and intercultural exchange. Everything we read influences what we think and, eventually, how we act. That is precisely why translation is such important work.
Like I already mentioned, the characters spoke to me personally (because I'm interested in language, translation and China myself), but their love, their desire to be heard and understood and their loneliness touched me on a more universal level. I think this book carries an important message - that as well as the emotional stories wrapped into a small neat package is what makes it worth reading. And reading again (I know I will).
your_true_shelf's review against another edition
3.0
I just couldn't love this book, no matter how hard I tried. I warmed to Iona the most and liked hearing about her life in Scotland. However, I never felt that we got to know Mu or Jian as deeply as I would have liked. I think part of the reason I didn't enjoy hearing about them as much was because their parts were in diary or letter format and I don't I like this as much as third person narrative. There was nothing happy about this story. I found it quite depressing. It did, however, give me an insight into how lonely one could feel as an immigrant. I felt deeply sorry for Jian when he was outside of China.
Because of the way I didn't really get to knows Jian & Mu, and because of the sorrow of the story, 2.5 stars.
Because of the way I didn't really get to knows Jian & Mu, and because of the sorrow of the story, 2.5 stars.
lostalleycat's review against another edition
4.0
First of all, I'm hooked by the cover. Even though it doesn't resemble the story at all, but who cares. I gotta hand it that the cover is lit.
The novel is written quite well. I admit Xiaolu is very poetic. The novel is written in multiple plot schemes and back-and-forth timeline which somehow I knew they're eventually connected to the novel's present day. China is very enigmatic as the whole entity. Its people, its culture, its language, and especially its politics. It will always be intriguing for China to be a background story.
Long story short, this is a love story. A love story of two star-crossed lovers, who fought for freedom, who looked for sense of purpose... across borders, across the oceans, across time.
The novel is written quite well. I admit Xiaolu is very poetic. The novel is written in multiple plot schemes and back-and-forth timeline which somehow I knew they're eventually connected to the novel's present day. China is very enigmatic as the whole entity. Its people, its culture, its language, and especially its politics. It will always be intriguing for China to be a background story.
Long story short, this is a love story. A love story of two star-crossed lovers, who fought for freedom, who looked for sense of purpose... across borders, across the oceans, across time.
claudiaprieto's review
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
coronaurora's review against another edition
3.0
This was depressing. Two self-serious kids, born in 90s and noughties China, punch drunk on the insidious totalitarianism, fashion themselves into anti-Establishment culture producers: him crafting a resume as a "positive" punk musician blasting out his manifestos in the underground clubs, and her channelling her inner Allen Ginsberg into sonnets of lament and wake-up jabs. They bunk together at university, trying to right the wrongs around them with words and strings, until they open the door and get headhunted. Cherry-picked to be put out or be milked, they both find themselves flung to different continents, and find their ideologies, their idea of liberty and love mauled by alienating sights, sounds and purposes of living. Knocked and drifting in different corners, they allow their thoughts and private cries to leak into indignant letters to each other.
This correspondence between the two lands in the hand of a British publisher touring a literary festival in China. A freelance translator gets employed to sort this cache of correspondence unsorted by year and this unsociable, self doubting worker bee finds herself breathlessly translating this unpredictable stash finding herself inadvertently wrapped in the narrative of these lovers. The book we hold in our hands then is revealed to be her labour of translation.
In scale and flavour, Guo's book reminded me of Tash Aw's Five Star Billionaire; though being a confident dabbler in media other than fiction writing, she really gets her hands in there to scramble chronology, insert photos of "original" correspondence, and for a good first half this found-footage trope is mysterious with the mystery compounded by an all-too self aware linguist-translator who worries herself crazy at probably not getting to the core of things given whole lakes of "untranslatedness" that stare at her within the valleys of text coined in incomprehensible colloquial expressions of another language.
But as the wrinkles and creases get ironed, the shape of the stories contained within this come to focus, and we enter into the final third of the book, switching between three narrators and timelines, my attention wavered and I found myself oddly getting indifferent to the fate of all three. A lot had to do with the dispiriting trajectory of lost innocence and horrifying histories of lost and muted generations that are recounted without relief. It called for a crisper climax as it builds itself into the reader/translator engulfed and absorbed into the stories of the still-alive people whose lives are being chronicled by her. Here I find myself feeling like those airport-novel readers who'd like that choicest of moments in the finale, when the author meets her subject, to be milked for that final giant emotional take-away scene rather than the indifferent poetry readout at Foyles! There are way too many intersecting personal histories, half-realised cynical epiphanies from fleeting impressions here, and the collective monotone of this weighed the book down for me.
This correspondence between the two lands in the hand of a British publisher touring a literary festival in China. A freelance translator gets employed to sort this cache of correspondence unsorted by year and this unsociable, self doubting worker bee finds herself breathlessly translating this unpredictable stash finding herself inadvertently wrapped in the narrative of these lovers. The book we hold in our hands then is revealed to be her labour of translation.
In scale and flavour, Guo's book reminded me of Tash Aw's Five Star Billionaire; though being a confident dabbler in media other than fiction writing, she really gets her hands in there to scramble chronology, insert photos of "original" correspondence, and for a good first half this found-footage trope is mysterious with the mystery compounded by an all-too self aware linguist-translator who worries herself crazy at probably not getting to the core of things given whole lakes of "untranslatedness" that stare at her within the valleys of text coined in incomprehensible colloquial expressions of another language.
But as the wrinkles and creases get ironed, the shape of the stories contained within this come to focus, and we enter into the final third of the book, switching between three narrators and timelines, my attention wavered and I found myself oddly getting indifferent to the fate of all three. A lot had to do with the dispiriting trajectory of lost innocence and horrifying histories of lost and muted generations that are recounted without relief. It called for a crisper climax as it builds itself into the reader/translator engulfed and absorbed into the stories of the still-alive people whose lives are being chronicled by her. Here I find myself feeling like those airport-novel readers who'd like that choicest of moments in the finale, when the author meets her subject, to be milked for that final giant emotional take-away scene rather than the indifferent poetry readout at Foyles! There are way too many intersecting personal histories, half-realised cynical epiphanies from fleeting impressions here, and the collective monotone of this weighed the book down for me.
charlottejones952's review against another edition
5.0
I will say straight away that I loved this book! I have read one book by this author before but didn't really know what to expect going into this one.
The writing style had me intrigued from the beginning and although it took me a long time to connect to Iona's parts of the story, I really enjoyed discovering more about all of these characters' lives. The inclusion of Chinese history and politics was fascinating and not something I've read about before.
I really believe that Xiaolu Guo did her research well and fleshed out these characters in such a way that made them feel completely realistic. Everything that happens could have taken place in real life and that added to the drama and concern that I had for the characters throughout.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone, especially if you are trying to read from diverse protagonists as this is a perspective that you don't get very often in English literature.
The writing style had me intrigued from the beginning and although it took me a long time to connect to Iona's parts of the story, I really enjoyed discovering more about all of these characters' lives. The inclusion of Chinese history and politics was fascinating and not something I've read about before.
I really believe that Xiaolu Guo did her research well and fleshed out these characters in such a way that made them feel completely realistic. Everything that happens could have taken place in real life and that added to the drama and concern that I had for the characters throughout.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone, especially if you are trying to read from diverse protagonists as this is a perspective that you don't get very often in English literature.