Lin Zhe

Overall I found the novel interesting because I knew very little about the period in China during the Communist takeover. The story leaps back and forth over the decades, sometimes not so nimbly.

The narrator, Hong'er, is quite unlikable as are many of the characters throughout the book. They're all too human in their shallowness, cowardliness, greed and ambition for power.

The writing itself is good even in translation. But there's just too much of it: too much detail, too many characters, too many stories. It's an effort to follow the serpentine storyline.

The narrator's Grandparents, Ninth Brother and Second Sister, are Christians who practice their religion with a good dose of Chinese superstition. The characters are quite well-written and the continuous political calamities over the decades makes for some fine drama.

Approximately at the 60% mark I began to feel exhausted. The list of characters is long.

One main problem was that the author would reintroduce a character that she had written about earlier but that I had totally forgotten in the interim chapters. A chart of the family and main characters might have helped me out.

And then, there is the way the author identifies characters via their differing relationships, which further complicates the story and confuses the reader.

As a couple of examples: in the section where her mother brings her to Old Town for the first time, our narrator refers to herself in the third person which I found jarring,

Then in another section the author is retelling the story of her Grandfather visiting his daughter's second husband in jail. We immediately begin the next thread referring to the same person as her step-father, which of course was her mother's second husband, previously referred to.

In the end I felt the book had merit but it was a struggle to read because it was so very slow and ponderous. This one's a marathon for sure.… (mais)

Lin Zhe’s generational novel gives readers a view of many changes that occurred in 20th Century China. The lengthy novel (681 pages in paperback) translated in a simple and direct style by George A. Fowler, traces the evolution of two families Guo and Lin during most of the last century. The focus is on Ninth Brother Lin and his wife Second Sister Guo the holder of the families’ connections.

The self sacrificing service provided by Ninth Brother in peace and war put his immediate family Second Sister and their children, two sons and a daughter, in mostly perilous but also joyous situations over the decades of his long life. Ninth Brother’s enduring Christian faith guides him through periods of cultural change, war, thought control, imprisonment, and bloody revolutions. Ninth Brother has faith in Jesus and feels protected by Him as evidenced by many brushes he has had with death. He does wonder, however, why he and his family must suffer so much.

The families’ stories are told as the Qing dynasty is toppled in 1911, the Chinese Nationalist Party assumes leadership of China in 1912, the Communist Party of China begins its slow but relentless rise culminating in a civil war victory in 1949, the dominance of Mao Zedong during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 1966-1976, and the death of Mao in 1976 beginning the “opening up” of China to the world with far reaching economic and political reforms of the 1980s.

The Lin and Guo families go through changes determined by history but also by interactions of personalities of the two extended families. The focal point of stability through all of the chaos is Second Sister who makes due with courage and resilience and abiding faith in God as she waits for the winds of change and the return of her often absent husband in her front yard under a banyan tree in West Gate, Old Town.

The family/cultural saga is narrated by the grown granddaughter of Ninth Brother and Second Sister, Hong’er. In the settings of her own chaotic life in modern day China and California where she chases her economic dreams, she reflects on the differences between her own rather meaningless atheistic life and the indomitable spirit of the lives of her Christian Chinese grandparents.

If you like family sagas in a historical context, you’ll enjoy this novel. The families’ thoughts and actions are foremost without any lengthy historical diversions.… (mais)