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leifalreadyexists 's review for:
China Mountain Zhang
by Maureen F. McHugh
I started China Mountain Zhang without much preparations, except for Jo Walton's introductory note that this was a "mosaic novel"... which it is not. Instead, it is a bildungsroman of a sort, with the theme of entrepreneurialism symbiotically woven into the traditional growth of an individual, in this case, the titular Zhang. McHugh's story pits the orthodoxy of an imagined dystopic socialist world governed by China and grinding its way through failure against the increasingly self-aware story of an engineer turned lecturer who re-discovers the courage of questioning orthodoxy in social and economic structures. I found this element of the novel less than compelling, as the triumph of realizing that Marx could be wrong is... less than surprising, even given the novel's attempt at presenting society as a collapse of flawed and racialist state socialism.
Better than its underpinnings are the novel's tools. To the extent that the novel is in a minor key and character-driven, however, can be measured by its focus on the quandaries, triumphs, and sufferings of its characters. The multiple perspectives (many of which are only presented once, except that of Zhang) give the novel its quasi-appearance of a mosaic. Each serves to contextualize and develop further on a phase of Zhang's life, thus providing a lens of society which he would be unable to realize. I enjoyed most of these reflections save for one that was unresolvedly confrontational in - and which felt like punishment for the character's plaintive striving toward beauty perhaps just as much as a brutal comment on rape culture. For the most part, however, the novel's approach to storytelling is its odd, idiosyncratic strength, and the key to its immense and strangely charming readability.
Better than its underpinnings are the novel's tools. To the extent that the novel is in a minor key and character-driven, however, can be measured by its focus on the quandaries, triumphs, and sufferings of its characters. The multiple perspectives (many of which are only presented once, except that of Zhang) give the novel its quasi-appearance of a mosaic. Each serves to contextualize and develop further on a phase of Zhang's life, thus providing a lens of society which he would be unable to realize. I enjoyed most of these reflections save for one that was unresolvedly confrontational in - and which felt like punishment for the character's plaintive striving toward beauty perhaps just as much as a brutal comment on rape culture. For the most part, however, the novel's approach to storytelling is its odd, idiosyncratic strength, and the key to its immense and strangely charming readability.