English

Carolyn See

I loved this book and can't stop talking about it. But it's wrenching and merciless and, though fictional, rooted in historical truth and based on the life of its author…It's an incredible example of human resilience that Wang managed to survive and write this transcendent book.
—The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

Wang's novel-based partially on his own experience-of learning English study during China's Cultural Revolution-is rather botched by a confusing performance by Christopher Lee. Lee's stop-and-start reading, overly careful parsing and somewhat stilted performance of the book's dialogue impedes listeners from immersing themselves in this critically and commercially successful Chinese novel. The pauses, rather than adding to the drama, conspire to suck it out of this story of totalitarian inhumanity, familial squabbling and the glories of learning English. Lee sounds like he is reading from a script he is unfamiliar with, with meaning and momentum taking a backseat to his careful pronunciation. A Viking hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 2). (Apr.)

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Kirkus Reviews

In a remote corner of China, the Cultural Revolution becomes a human drama, observed and acted out by a boy increasingly obsessed with sex and language. Ironies, tragedies and harsh life lessons pile up in Wang's novel, a bestseller in his native China. Narrated by Love Liu, the child of talented architects forced to conceal their skepticism for the communist regime and their Western tastes, it delivers a tragicomic perspective on a period of fear and uncertainty. Teenage Love Liu looks on his parents' behavior-his father's weakness; his mother's affair with the school principal-with critical detachment. With puberty dawning, he is more attracted to fellow pupil Sunrise Huang, competing with her for the title of English class representative; sympathizing when her father commits suicide; sensing jealousy when their English teacher, Second Prize Wang, gives her special attention; and feeling pangs of desire for her developing body. Love Liu begins to see the teacher as a role model and when Sunrise Huang is pressured into accusing Second Prize Wang of "questionable morals," Love Liu urges her to exonerate him using a Maoist wall poster. The power of words, to enthrall or destroy, is illustrated often and symbolized in Second Prize Wang's English dictionary, which Love Liu covets and attempts to steal. But the friendship with the older man matters more, weathering many storms, assisting Love Liu to grow up and offering significant joys, large and small. A loner comes of age in a telling, appreciably non-Western narrative enriched by politics and poetry.