A review by womanroars
Big Breasts and Wide Hips by Mo Yan

1.0

If I was rating this book in a professional capacity I would probably give it 3 or 4 stars. Well-written and important themes and allegories parallel to the history of China (most of which I'm sure went over my head).

Since this is goodreads and goodreads is for me, I rate this book 2 stars. I really don't like books that function purely to list the epic and horrible events in the characters lives, no matter how well-written it is. Just one bad thing after another, brought about by both circumstances and the characters' bad decisions. Maybe because the only way to tell a story as epic as this one is to make all the characters be passive, as though the story is not about them but only the events they live or don't live through.

As such the many women and the men around them become stock characters, a sense of hidden complexity which perhaps would have emerged if the reader were allowed to spend enough time with them.

I have loved most of the magical realism that I have read in the past, but it's been awhile, and I wonder if that is what felt disjointed about this read. I wonder if I had read the books I loved when I was younger now if I would have enjoyed them the same. Or maybe it's a cultural thing. The narrator will only drink his mother's milk until at least 7 and afterwards subsists only on goat's milk for quite awhile and it kept bringing to mind the stories in the past of mothers who breast feed their children until they have grown to outrageous ages.

I read this because the author won the Nobel prize for literature. I feel very ambivalent about it. Would I have chosen it? No. But I suspect my reasons would be of taste rather than the quality of the literature. I also feel a tinge of resentment that since I borrowed it from the library on my nook I had to drop everything I was reading to finish this one and of course three more came in so now I'll have to charge through them if I want to finish them and i suspect that i will enjoy them more than I did this one. But that is the reading life I suppose.

Quick note: the random changes in perspective from jintong to 3rd person omniscient was annoying as was the misspelling of I'm to Fm that occurred several times throughout the novel.