November 13, 2017
Originally completed in 1976 and appearing in English for the first time, this intricate novel follows a young Chinese woman, known as Julie, who comes of age during World War II. The book opens before the Japanese invasion of British Hong Kong, where Julie attends private boarding school. These scenes are among the book’s most striking, as the students provide a fascinating cross-section of different lifestyles as informed by various backgrounds, from the rural provinces of the mainland to cosmopolitan aristocracy. During this time, Julie’s divorced mother, Rachel, first passes through, on her way, as she always is, to some other place with some other man. Once the Japanese attack, Julie leaves school and settles in Shanghai with her father’s sister, Judy, known as “Third Aunt.” Here, Julie discovers both writing and love, beginning a long affair with a renowned author and finding her voice in her stories. The translation is elegant, though the expansive cast—there’s an eight-page character index at the back of the book—may require some sorting out on the reader’s part (at one point Judy describes a family relation to Julie as “Brother Hsu’s mother was Third Concubine’s servant girl”). Nevertheless, the novel provides an intimate glimpse into an alluring world, rife with vivid detail and characters.
November 1, 2017
World War II-era romance, with dark edges and sharp social commentary, by Chinese expatriate novelist Chang (Love in a Fallen City, 2006, etc.).No one is happy in the Sheng household, where, in prewar Shanghai, the parents have parted, the mother to be her own free-spirited woman, the father to sink into the dream of an opium pipe. Julie, their daughter, is in Hong Kong in an English school, trying to beat the masters at their own game; early on, Chang tells us, she resolves that she "simply had to find a way to force teachers to give her the highest marks ever awarded and make sure they would feel guilty if she didn't receive the top score." As the story progresses, borrowing a page from Rachel, her mother, Julie further resolves to be her own person, an artist of renown, a goal complicated by an ill-advised, complicated romance with Chih-yung, a collaborator with the Japanese puppet regime. Chih-yung, for his part, has a seemingly endless store of wives tucked all over China, but that doesn't keep him from cooing to Julie, "I don't like courtship, I like marriage....I want to settle down with you." It takes another 100-odd pages for Julie to see through Chih-yung, over the course of which she begins to notice in sharp outline the foibles of her own family and household, who bear names such as "Tall and Skinny" and "Thirteenth Master." Chang skillfully delves into a number of compelling issues, including anti-Asian racism ("You people never go overseas," Rachel scolds. "If you did, then you'd know just how humiliating it is to be looked down upon") and drug addiction. And if in the end the story is a kind of high-minded potboiler along the lines of Herman Wouk's The Winds of War, it makes for a multifaceted portrait of pre-Communist Chinese society.Originally written in 1976 but not published until 2009 in China, this is a welcome discovery from a writer who is only now, more than two decades after her death, coming into her own.
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