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Laddar... Dear Chrysanthemums: A Novel in Storiesav Fiona Sze-Lorrain
   Ingen/inga Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken.  Sarah-Hope | Sep 2, 2023 |  inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
A startling and vivid debut novel in stories from acclaimed poet and translator Fiona Sze-Lorrain, featuring deeply compelling Asian women who reckon with the past, violence, and exile--set in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Paris, and New York. Composed of several interconnected stories, each taking place in a year ending with the number six, ironically a number that in Chinese divination signifies "a smooth life," Dear Chrysanthemums is a novel about the scourge of inhumanity, survival, and past trauma that never leaves. The women in these stories are cooks, musicians, dancers, protestors, mothers and daughters, friends and enemies, all inexplicably connected in one way or another. "Cooking for Madam Chiang," 1946: Two cooks work for Madame Chiang Kai-shek and prepare a foreign dish craved by their mistress, which becomes a political weapon and leads to their tragic end. "Death at the Wukang Mansion," 1966: Punished for her extramarital affair, a dancer is transferred to Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution and assigned to an ominous apartment in a building whose other residents often depart in coffins. "The White Piano," 1966: A bidding pianist from New York City settles down in Paris and is assaulted when a mysterious piano arrives from Singapore. "The Invisible Window," 2016: After their exile following the Tiananmen Square massacre, three women gather in a French cathedral to renew their friendship and reunite in their grief and faith. With devastating precision, a masterly ear for language, and a profound understanding of both human cruelty and compassion, Fiona Sze-Lorrain weaves Dear Chrysanthemums, an evocative and disturbing portrait of diasporic life, the shared story of uprooting, resilience, artistic expression, and enduring love. Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
Pågående diskussionerIngen/ingaPopulära omslag
 Google Books — Laddar...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-Klassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg: (3.63)
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2
I want to say both that
1. reading this book requires a willingness to be a bit frustrated
and
2. the pay-off in the end makes those frustrations worthwhile.
Sze-Lorrain trusts readers to come to this book with an internal sense of the timeline of recent Chinese history beginning just before the communist revolution, moving through the cultural revolution, the student uprisings in Tiananmen square, to today's more pragmatic and economically based relations between China and the rest of the world. The reader doesn't need to be an excerpt in any of this, but consulting Wikipedia before beginning reading and as needed during the book's progression certainly wouldn't hurt.
Dear Chrysanthemums is one of those books that offer a significant payoff in the end. The final story clarifies the relationships among the disparate characters so that an overview of the China's recent history as experienced by its citizens suddenly becomes clear, as if one has reached the apex of a string of hills and is looking out over a new landscape. And after that reading, comes all the interesting chewing on what Sze-Lorraine has given us, finding our own understandings of the book's characters and lessons. This is the phase I'm in now, and I'm quite enjoying it.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Net Galley; the opinions are my own. (