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Loading... Becoming Madame Maoby Anchee Min
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I'm going to be brief in my review of this Novel. I think it's terrific. In fact, I'll go a step further and say it is the best fiction work I've read in a long time. Not since reading Shogun, have I enjoyed a style of writing more. Anchee Min seems to be able to combine the terse style of Hemingway with the ethereal style of E. L. Doctorow in Ragtime--to create an entire universe that allows the reader to gently plunge in. I can't find a thing wrong with this book. True it switches persons in an unusual way, but I remain unfettered in opinion by virtue of that technique. ... read more on my blog: http://www.stephenrganns.com/review-b...  steve_ganns | Aug 30, 2009 |  I found this book really interesting -- the interplay between Mao Jian Ching's thinking and the 3rd person writing was unusual and effectively. Seemed to be nicely researched. A good read. (  ) TigsW | Aug 22, 2009 | A powerful and confusing book. i enjoyed the psychology of it, but I found the jumps between perspectives annoying, and often confusing. I'm not sure it was necessary to do it the way it was done. Still, a powerful, compelling character's story. makes me want to know more about her. (  ) kikilon | Mar 31, 2009 | I saw Anchee Min in a great interview on TV. She is really something. Interviewed feb 5th 08 Writers Symposium by the Sea by Dean Nelson at Point Loma Nazerine University. About how in china the people were incapable of thinking.... taught that woman are born to be stepped on.. madam Mao killed she said I am Mao's dog Mao asked me to bite . I bit. She said Nobody starts evil. I do not doubt that If I was in Vietnam I would be there killing someone like my husband. I would be dieing for others, for those poor people in the us. Writing takes determination, commitment craftsman ship. In China they talk like - The Wind shows its body through trembling leaves. In china when you celebrate you sing opera.because only in the opera do you get to escape your life and be the hero. www.pointloma.edu ( I think) freestar | Apr 12, 2008 | I was rather dissapointed by this book. In spite of its interesting subject matter, it was very difficult to read. I had particular difficulty getting into the story because the narrator changed paragraph by paragraph. (  ) ejfertig | May 15, 2007 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0618004076, Hardcover)Many writers have engaged in the project of rescuing female figures from history, but few have tackled such an unsympathetic character as Anchee Min does in her historical novel Becoming Madame Mao. Known as the White Boned Demon during her reign of terror in China, Madame Mao was blamed for countless bloody and vengeful executions; she sought out those who had wronged her in the past and wiped them off the face of the earth. Eventually she was reviled in China and executed, even as her husband was revered as a hero.Before her stint as Mao's first lady, Jiang Ching, as she was then known, was an actress, a singer, and a star in Communist films. Anchee Min grew up in Red China and watched Jiang Ching from afar; she was fascinated by her for many years, by tales of her independence and strength, and by images of her beauty. In a way, the great villain and demon was a role model for Anchee Min, and her teenage devotion is the engine of her remarkable novel. Moving back and forth between stories of the actress and the evil dictator, Min complicates the Madame Mao of history. As a girl, Madame Mao narrowly escaped having her feet bound. The book opens with graphic descriptions of this process and of the ensuing infection that freed her. But if her feet were not bound, her spirit was. Reared by a mother who was the last concubine of a rich man, and a father who liked to hit his girls with shovels, Madame Mao as a young girl felt herself doomed: "I see my father hit Mother with a shovel. It happened suddenly. Without warning. I can hardly believe my eyes. He is mad. He calls Mother a slut. Mother's body curls up. My chest swells. He hits her back, front, shouting that he will break her bones." The father then goes on to treat his daughter the same way. Decades later, when Madame Mao manifests deep brutality, Min seems to be saying that what goes around comes around. Flawed by a clumsy structure that vacillates between third and first person arbitrarily, Becoming Madame Mao is nevertheless an immensely interesting work--defiant, morally ambiguous, and difficult to put down. --Emily White (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:18 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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