Review: The Stolen Bicycle

The Stolen Bicycle by Wu Ming-Yi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So, this book was longlisted for the Man Booker prize, and there was some controversy since Man Booker first listed the author as Taiwanese, then switched to Chinese (under pressure from Beijing), which made the author protest on his facebook page. Anyway, the book didn't make the shortlist, and I can't help thinking the whole China/Taiwan drama may have had something to do with it.

Regardless, this was an excellent book, although this may be partly because I love Taiwan, and this book is thoroughly Taiwanese. It delves deep into certain aspects of Taiwanese history that I otherwise would know nothing about. In the process you also get a more Japanese perspective of certain events in WW2.

It's certainly not a clean, straightforward narrative, but it branches out into many avenues. I won't say it gets sidetracked, since the narrator is always in pursuit of the same thing (the bicycle), but in doing so a lot of ground is covered.

There's quite a bit of interesting symbolism (holding onto peoples' waists while riding a bicycle behind them, to then being the person in front with someone holding on behind. Also the parallels between the inanimate bicycle and the animate elephant, and I'm sure there are plenty more I've missed).

The postscript is beautiful. And thanks to it I found my favorite Jonathan Franzen quote: "Fiction meant taking up whatever the world had abandoned by the road and making something beautiful out of it."

A pet peeve though: The Chinese transliteration was really weird. Most of it was done using Wade-Giles (who does that anymore?), but some seemed haphazard (Ssu-Chuan for Sichuan/Szechuan)? I do wish I could read this in the original Chinese though, since I heard his prose is very poetic. I think some of this comes across in translation, but I'm sure a lot of it is lost.

If you're going to read one work of contemporary Taiwanese fiction, this should probably be it.


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Review: The Impossible Fairy Tale

The Impossible Fairy Tale by Han Yujoo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ok, I think I have to join all the other reviewers who have no idea what to make of this book. It was disturbing, and the writing style was odd but somehow catching. The second half made it more confusing, but also much more interesting. For some reason I really enjoyed the afterword.

I have to confess, however, that I didn't fully understand the style, and it probably needs to be read in the original language to be fully appreciated (or understood).

SERIOUS SPOILERS BELOW
The first half had that ambience of pointlessness that I've come across in other contemporary Korean fiction, but the writing style definitely added to the general feeling of hopelessness. The second half was the oddest part. It was from a teacher's point of view, although I don't think it was the teacher from the first half, but rather the author herself, and the person she's talking to is the main character from the first half. Somewhat reminiscent of Pirandello's "Six characters in search of an Author", but here she finds her author and has some questions for her. At least that's how I saw it. Then again, maybe I'm wrong. The writing style was definitely not one of the clearest. Oddly enough I really liked the afterword.

4 stars, for now

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