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iagonizing 's review for:
The Stolen Bicycle
by Wu Ming-Yi
My favourite things about the book is just how diverse all the different stories that are encapsulated in the plot are. Like we have a story about a woman making collages with butterfly wings, a story of a man living in post-war Taipei, a trip down memory lane for an animal-loving Taipei resident during Japanese colonial times, a military recruit that meets a retired official with a Japanese spirit in a small bird, an Taiwan indigenous man recruited to travel to the war in Southeast Asia, a young girl caught in a bombing while pushing straw scarecrows around in the paddy fields. It's all these diverse stories and viewpoints with a common thread: bicycles.
I really enjoyed the book, and I liked the hints of magical realism here and there (a bit like The Man With Compound Eyes). I like that every story was so different from each other, and the different voices of the characters, how they come in and out and the whole main storyline develops. Though there were a few tedious parts (like the description of war movements in Southeast Asia and the detailed descriptions of bicycles and their parts) there are a tonne of beautiful passages that I jotted down because I loved them so much. For me it was a great read, but perhaps if you don't know so much about Taiwanese history it might be a little bit harder to get into.
Another aspect that was especially enjoyable for me was the mixture of languages, in speech, people's names and places. They represented the situation in Taiwan expertly, with the mix of Mandarin, Taiwanese, Seediq and Japanese.
I really enjoyed the book, and I liked the hints of magical realism here and there (a bit like The Man With Compound Eyes). I like that every story was so different from each other, and the different voices of the characters, how they come in and out and the whole main storyline develops. Though there were a few tedious parts (like the description of war movements in Southeast Asia and the detailed descriptions of bicycles and their parts) there are a tonne of beautiful passages that I jotted down because I loved them so much. For me it was a great read, but perhaps if you don't know so much about Taiwanese history it might be a little bit harder to get into.
Another aspect that was especially enjoyable for me was the mixture of languages, in speech, people's names and places. They represented the situation in Taiwan expertly, with the mix of Mandarin, Taiwanese, Seediq and Japanese.