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Loading... Brothersby Da Chen
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I read this book over two years ago. Maybe three. What I wanted to impart in this review was how this book has stayed with me and while I just read a scathing review of this book I would recommend it. My memory of it is not very clear but I do know I enjoyed it and found it very moving and unexpected. no reviews | add a review
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Two half brothers born to a powerful general, one to the general's wife and one to his mistress, know nothing of each others existence. One is driven to glorify his father, the other wants revenge. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW
The writing is very simple and the story is in no way unique. My biggest problem is with the utter absurdity of the premise and many of the subsequent events. For example, the illegitimate son is born as his disgraced mother is in the process of committing suicide by jumping off of a sheer cliff; literally, as in evacuating the birth canal in mid-air. The baby survives, believe it or not by becoming hung in tree branches. Okay.
Even more absurd is the fact that in a nation of one billion people, the two brothers, separated by thousands of miles, actually meet and fall in love with the same orphaned young woman. Really.
This young woman, the heroine of the novel, is brutally gang raped. Immediately thereafter, and I mean immediately, she has ardent and passionate sexual intercourse with her rescuer. I’m not joking. I don’t know who Da Chen is, but pretty clearly he is a clueless male.
Perhaps equally as absurd is the rapidity and ease by which one of the characters goes from being a penniless beggar to the richest man in China in the space of about five years, owning hundreds of businesses, all of which are wildly successful from the start.
This is a book so absurd that it was impossible for me to enjoy reading it. I actually became disgusted at the extent to which the author took his readers for clueless simpletons. Some have used the term magical realism to describe the author’s writing. This is not magical realism. It only seems like it because the author’s story lines are so absurd and ridiculous. Leave this one for the Harlequin crowd. ( )