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Q.How do you make recent Chinese history dull
A. Ask Edward Rurtherfurd to write about it
Rutherfurd's sweeping epics (Sarum, The Forest etc) were thoroughly enjoyable romps through history told across centuries and even millennia by members of interlinking families. This structure disguised weakness of characterisation, plot and even historical perspective.
In this book, though, those elements have nowhere to hide, so this is an anglocentric view of China told via a cast of cardboard characters who make the opium wars seem as interesting as a mid-pandemic trip to the supermarket. I am sure he has done his research but the outcome is a really dull tome whose characters do not come alive. Abandoned about a third of the way in.......
A. Ask Edward Rurtherfurd to write about it
Rutherfurd's sweeping epics (Sarum, The Forest etc) were thoroughly enjoyable romps through history told across centuries and even millennia by members of interlinking families. This structure disguised weakness of characterisation, plot and even historical perspective.
In this book, though, those elements have nowhere to hide, so this is an anglocentric view of China told via a cast of cardboard characters who make the opium wars seem as interesting as a mid-pandemic trip to the supermarket. I am sure he has done his research but the outcome is a really dull tome whose characters do not come alive. Abandoned about a third of the way in.......