This collection of novellas and short stories encapsulates her work well. These are short glimpses into brief encounters between men and women. Men and women in love, men and women in lust, men and women trapped by circumstance and time, thinking the other might be able to help them.

Plus, look at how she shifts in time in "The Golden Cangue"

The green bamboo curtain and a green and gold landscape scroll reflected in the mirrors went on swinging back and forth in the wind--one could get dizzy watching it for long. When she looked again, the green bamboo curtain had faded, the green and gold landscape was replaced by a photograph of her deceased husband, and the woman in the mirror was ten years older.

I could drown in Chang's prose. I get lost in it. It is evocative of an era. Her scenes are lush, her dialogue and plot are fraught and taut, without crossing that line into ick.

see my full review and all my reviews at www.tushuguan.blogspot.com ( )

Something very odd about the title story. Make that 2 somethings. First, here we have the couple in the Repulse Bay Hotel during the Japanese invasion ... and never have I read a flatter description of an invasion or battle scene. Many readers might not even get that that there was any fighting or death--it's that flat. Who else was staying at the hotel? What kind of conversations did they have? And what does the couple see walking home in the aftermath? I take it tha this was because the story was published in 1942-1944 in Shanghai and she had to carefully avoid censorship. But why does translator and biographer Karen Kingsbury not address this in her intro?

Second something: I love these details about proper female behavior: what's permissible/borderline/condemning for this class of woman? She's divorced but still living in a very traditional family, much more so than Chang or the characters in some of the other stories. So, I don't understand how she gets herself in such a compromising position with F during the initial stay in the hotel with her relatives. (And what were their motives?)

Second, since she hasn't had sex with F and she appears to have F hooked, why does she give in to him when she could probably hold out for marriage. And the very next day he announces he's off for an extended stay in England?! She isn't alarmed or surprised, as long as she's got a house and enough to live on.

I also don't know if I believe the free-ranging Indian female character with the daring wardrobe. Perhaps Chang is engaging in her own brand of Eastern exoticism? ( )

Eileen Chang connects this collection of short stories together by the common theme of troubled relationships. The turmoil of the relationships in these stories mirror the changes taking part in China during that time.

While I always felt a sense of dread when starting each new story, knowing that it'll never end in happily ever after, I was also eager to see what twists and turns the characters would go through in their quest for love. ( )