I Am China by Xiaolu Guo
Nov. 13th, 2016 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
In a flat above a noisy north London market, translator Iona Kirkpatrick starts work on a Chinese letter: Dearest Mu, The sun is piercing, old bastard sky. I am feeling empty and bare. Nothing is in my soul, apart from the image of you. I am writing to you from a place I cannot tell you about yet … .
In a detention centre in Dover exiled Chinese musician Jian is awaiting an unknown fate. In Beijing his girlfriend Mu sends desperate letters to London to track him down, her last memory of the together a roaring rock concert and Jian the king on stage. Until the state police stormed in.
As Iona unravels the story of these Chinese lovers from their first flirtations at Beijing University to Jian’s march in the Jasmine Revolution, Jian and Mu seem to be travelling further and further away from each other while Iona feels more and more alive. Intoxicated by their romance, Iona sets out to bring them back together, but time seems to be running out.
It’s April 2013. Iona Kirkpatrick is a translator hired by publisher Jonathan Barker to translate a cache of letters, diaries and other documents passed to him by a mysterious woman while he was at a publishing event in Beijing. The documents are jumbled up and out of order but Iona slowly picks out the story of the relationship between Jian (a Chinese punk musician and son of a rising star in the Communist Party and Mu (a simple country girl who writes poetry), from their first meeting at Beijing University to Jian’s increasing determination to spread a new political manifesto and the distance – both physical and emotional - that this creates between him and Mu. Iona becomes obsessed with uncovering everything about them, their relationship throwing into sharp relief her own empty life of anonymous sex and making her consider her own family background on the Isle of Mull.
Xiaolu Guo’s novel is a flawed but interesting read that examines China since 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre through Jian and Mu’s relationship, taking in China’s growing influence in the world and the nature of translation and how it epitomises the problem of communication. I picked the book up because I saw Guo speak at the London Literary Festival and was interested in what she had to say. This novel’s at its best when examining modern China – particularly strong is the reaction of Chinese students at Harvard to Mu’s revolutionary poetry (anyone who thinks a Western education means more liberal attitudes is in for a shock) – but I also enjoyed the hospital scenes involving Mu’s dying father and her conversations with her mother about the need for a secure future. I believed in the relationship between Jian and Mu and enjoyed the letters they send each other, notwithstanding the slightly purple and stilted language used at times. The Iona sections were less successful for me – in part because the language felt so stilted and unnatural and because I really didn’t care about her low self-esteem or need to feel her emotional void with casual sex – although I did enjoy the comments she makes on the frustrations of translating someone else’s words to get at the meaning. Although the book meanders in the final quarter and it’s obvious where Jian’s story is going (not helped by a soap opera conclusion), I found this a thought-provoking read and would check out Guo’s other work.
The Verdict:
Xiaolu Guo’s novel is a flawed but interesting read that examines China since 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre through Jian and Mu’s relationship, taking in China’s growing influence in the world and the nature of translation and how it epitomises the problem of communication. I picked the book up because I saw Guo speak at the London Literary Festival and was interested in what she had to say. This novel’s at its best when examining modern China – particularly strong is the reaction of Chinese students at Harvard to Mu’s revolutionary poetry (anyone who thinks a Western education means more liberal attitudes is in for a shock) – but I also enjoyed the hospital scenes involving Mu’s dying father and her conversations with her mother about the need for a secure future. I believed in the relationship between Jian and Mu and enjoyed the letters they send each other, notwithstanding the slightly purple and stilted language used at times. The Iona sections were less successful for me – in part because the language felt so stilted and unnatural and because I really didn’t care about her low self-esteem or need to feel her emotional void with casual sex – although I did enjoy the comments she makes on the frustrations of translating someone else’s words to get at the meaning. Although the book meanders in the final quarter and it’s obvious where Jian’s story is going (not helped by a soap opera conclusion), I found this a thought-provoking read and would check out Guo’s other work.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
In a flat above a noisy north London market, translator Iona Kirkpatrick starts work on a Chinese letter: Dearest Mu, The sun is piercing, old bastard sky. I am feeling empty and bare. Nothing is in my soul, apart from the image of you. I am writing to you from a place I cannot tell you about yet … .
In a detention centre in Dover exiled Chinese musician Jian is awaiting an unknown fate. In Beijing his girlfriend Mu sends desperate letters to London to track him down, her last memory of the together a roaring rock concert and Jian the king on stage. Until the state police stormed in.
As Iona unravels the story of these Chinese lovers from their first flirtations at Beijing University to Jian’s march in the Jasmine Revolution, Jian and Mu seem to be travelling further and further away from each other while Iona feels more and more alive. Intoxicated by their romance, Iona sets out to bring them back together, but time seems to be running out.
It’s April 2013. Iona Kirkpatrick is a translator hired by publisher Jonathan Barker to translate a cache of letters, diaries and other documents passed to him by a mysterious woman while he was at a publishing event in Beijing. The documents are jumbled up and out of order but Iona slowly picks out the story of the relationship between Jian (a Chinese punk musician and son of a rising star in the Communist Party and Mu (a simple country girl who writes poetry), from their first meeting at Beijing University to Jian’s increasing determination to spread a new political manifesto and the distance – both physical and emotional - that this creates between him and Mu. Iona becomes obsessed with uncovering everything about them, their relationship throwing into sharp relief her own empty life of anonymous sex and making her consider her own family background on the Isle of Mull.
Xiaolu Guo’s novel is a flawed but interesting read that examines China since 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre through Jian and Mu’s relationship, taking in China’s growing influence in the world and the nature of translation and how it epitomises the problem of communication. I picked the book up because I saw Guo speak at the London Literary Festival and was interested in what she had to say. This novel’s at its best when examining modern China – particularly strong is the reaction of Chinese students at Harvard to Mu’s revolutionary poetry (anyone who thinks a Western education means more liberal attitudes is in for a shock) – but I also enjoyed the hospital scenes involving Mu’s dying father and her conversations with her mother about the need for a secure future. I believed in the relationship between Jian and Mu and enjoyed the letters they send each other, notwithstanding the slightly purple and stilted language used at times. The Iona sections were less successful for me – in part because the language felt so stilted and unnatural and because I really didn’t care about her low self-esteem or need to feel her emotional void with casual sex – although I did enjoy the comments she makes on the frustrations of translating someone else’s words to get at the meaning. Although the book meanders in the final quarter and it’s obvious where Jian’s story is going (not helped by a soap opera conclusion), I found this a thought-provoking read and would check out Guo’s other work.
The Verdict:
Xiaolu Guo’s novel is a flawed but interesting read that examines China since 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre through Jian and Mu’s relationship, taking in China’s growing influence in the world and the nature of translation and how it epitomises the problem of communication. I picked the book up because I saw Guo speak at the London Literary Festival and was interested in what she had to say. This novel’s at its best when examining modern China – particularly strong is the reaction of Chinese students at Harvard to Mu’s revolutionary poetry (anyone who thinks a Western education means more liberal attitudes is in for a shock) – but I also enjoyed the hospital scenes involving Mu’s dying father and her conversations with her mother about the need for a secure future. I believed in the relationship between Jian and Mu and enjoyed the letters they send each other, notwithstanding the slightly purple and stilted language used at times. The Iona sections were less successful for me – in part because the language felt so stilted and unnatural and because I really didn’t care about her low self-esteem or need to feel her emotional void with casual sex – although I did enjoy the comments she makes on the frustrations of translating someone else’s words to get at the meaning. Although the book meanders in the final quarter and it’s obvious where Jian’s story is going (not helped by a soap opera conclusion), I found this a thought-provoking read and would check out Guo’s other work.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
