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A review by huerca_armada
Land of Big Numbers: Stories by Te-Ping Chen
3.0
Some interesting stuff explored in Te-ping Chen's short story collection, exploring themes that run the gamut of intergenerational divides, youthful ennui, and futures that never arrived, all held together by a glue of hope. While I'm not a fan with how brief some of them could be, I never felt as if I was starved of closure for any of the characters or their plot threads.
If I had to give a ranking of the short stories presented, it would probably fall as:
1. On the Street Where You Live (Fascinating character study)
2. Gubeikou Spirit (Magical realism finds itself welded to a Kafkaesque situation - a melange more promising than at first glance).
3. Land of Big Numbers (How quickly ego and sureness transform into desperation)
4. New Fruit (Another example of magical realism, touchingly sweet and bitter at the same time)
5. Shanghai Murmur (Really empathize with the main character of this one, and her plight)
6. Field Notes on a Marriage (Loss doesn't mean that you get closure to go along with it)
7. Hotline Girl (Living with optimism despite paring down your expectations for your future - let down by the overt focus on the reappearance of an old lover though)
8. Flying Machine (While humorous at points, it feels a little more disjointed than I would like it to be).
9. Beautiful Country (Struggling to find much of a connection to the narrator of the story, much less the other characters presented)
10. Lulu (Undercut severely by its ending, made worse by the fact that it is the opening part of the collection).
If I had to give a ranking of the short stories presented, it would probably fall as:
1. On the Street Where You Live (Fascinating character study)
2. Gubeikou Spirit (Magical realism finds itself welded to a Kafkaesque situation - a melange more promising than at first glance).
3. Land of Big Numbers (How quickly ego and sureness transform into desperation)
4. New Fruit (Another example of magical realism, touchingly sweet and bitter at the same time)
5. Shanghai Murmur (Really empathize with the main character of this one, and her plight)
6. Field Notes on a Marriage (Loss doesn't mean that you get closure to go along with it)
7. Hotline Girl (Living with optimism despite paring down your expectations for your future - let down by the overt focus on the reappearance of an old lover though)
8. Flying Machine (While humorous at points, it feels a little more disjointed than I would like it to be).
9. Beautiful Country (Struggling to find much of a connection to the narrator of the story, much less the other characters presented)
10. Lulu (Undercut severely by its ending, made worse by the fact that it is the opening part of the collection).