The Chinese Central Propaganda Bureau banned the book in China because it “slanders Mao Zedong…and is overflowing with sex”:...
Satirical novel of love during the Cultural Revolution.
“Serve the people,” a slogan taken from a speech Mao Zedong gave in 1944, plays a paradoxical role in the life of Wu Dawang, an orderly assigned to garden and cook for the Party’s Division Commander in 1967. It’s emblazoned on a sign that decorates the Division Commander’s dinner table, defining the path to advancement in the People’s Liberation Army and in the Party. But then the Division Commander’s wife, Liu Lian, tells Wu Dawang that whenever the sign has been moved from its usual place, he is to stop performing his usual duties and attend to her very specific, very personal needs upstairs. Wu Dawang knows that Liu Lian has the power to destroy his hopes for advancement, and he has also been told—again and again—that to serve the Division Commander and his family is to serve the people. Nor is he unaware that Liu Lian is gorgeous, glamorous and passionate in ways that his peasant wife is not. So naturally, Wu Dawang decides to serve the people by serving Liu Lian. Their affair comes to a terrible end, but before it does the lovers indulge in an orgy that allows them to express long-suppressed physical and emotional needs, including the need to exorcise the exigencies of class in a society where inequality does not officially exist. Lianke’s protagonists bring their debauchery to a climax in a contest to determine which is the greater counterrevolutionary: They rampage through the Division Commander’s house destroying all the Mao-emblazoned furnishings, crockery, cookware and decorative bric-a-brac they can find. There’s no reason to believe, however, that love can triumph over the Party.
The Chinese Central Propaganda Bureau banned the book in China because it “slanders Mao Zedong…and is overflowing with sex”: You couldn’t ask for a better blurb than that.Pub Date: March 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8021-7044-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Black Cat/Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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