Raise the Red Lantern

Whilst Su Tong's novellas will be easily forgotten once read, there's something very hypnotic about his writing style which make his stories compulsive reading. It's very much like sitting down and listening to your grandparents telling stories about their past, at times disjointed, but always coming together and conveying the most important elements of plot and character. The three tales that Su Tong tells in this way, become alive in the reader's mind.

Of course particular credit has to be given to the novella 'Raise the Red Lantern', inspiring the award winning film of the same name. This story is told wonderfully, the different characters come alive in the reader's mind, and you find yourself emotionally involved in the affairs show more concerning fourth concubine, Lotus, as she slips into insanity. All of her anger and her frustrations are passionately described, in a way that the reader feels the struggles of what she is having to go through, and why at times, she strives to put on a face to show her gratitude for being accepted into a wealthy family, whilst she equally recognises her exploitation as a concubine and contemplates death.

The Opium Family and Nineteen Thirty Four Escapes are likewise, brutally vivid stories about the struggles of the poor, and how family life is torn apart. Fantastically told and depicted so vividly, they are hard stories to put down and return from 1930s China, to reality. show less

I enjoyed all three stories in here. It was a new experience to read Su Tong's work because his writing style and narration was different from most other authors that I have read. I also saw the movie with the same name, and it was interesting to note the differences between the story and the film - the bad servant that constantly antagonizes Lotus is punished in very different ways in the movie and book. All in all, a good read.

I initially bought this book because I'd seen the movie Raise the Red Latern and was intrigued to see whether the book was the same. In fact, the book differs somewhat, and in some ways I liked the differences, but the book made me think that the author was misogynostic. Although it is clear from the text (and history) that the women had no choice in becoming concubines, there seemed to be no sympathy for these women. Each was presented in a consistently bad light, especially in relation to the men in the story. Though the text shows that Lotus had little choice in sinking to virtual prostitution, there was little other discussion of the situation, a huge hole in the story to my way of thinking.

The two other novellas have the same kind show more of treatment of the women in the stories. Though there is lip service paid to the fact that they are poverty stricken and the men hold all the power, there is no sympathy for them. They are pawns, expendible and unloveable.

Several times in Raise the Red Latern one of the male characters says that he's afraid of women -- I suspect the author was speaking from his heart here and that his fear of women carries itself over into his fiction where he can demean and mistreat his female characters. show less

De rode lantaarn is het schokkende relaas van vier vrouwen, gehuwd met dezelfde man. Elk voor zich strijden zij om de liefde en de aandacht van hun echtgenoot en meester. De jonge Lotus moet, na de dood van haar vader, van school af om de vierde vrouw te worden van een rijke koopman. Ze is eenzaam en ongelukkig en vindt maar bij één van de andere vrouwen enige steun en vriendschap. De andere twee maken haar het leven zo zuur mogelijk. Waanzin blijkt haar enige schuilplaats, maar uiteindelijk ook haar wapen te zijn.

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Tong-Epouses-et-concubines/35522
> Le Livre de Poche (celiatas) : https://fr.calameo.com/books/0043038443afedcb9a996

> Songlian a dix-neuf ans, elle est étudiante, elle est belle... Mais la ruine de sa famille l'oblige à devenir la quatrième épouse du riche Chen Zuoqian. Dans le huis clos de sa nouvelle vie, elle va découvrir la seule loi qui compte : celle de la séduction. Car la favorite de la nuit est la maîtresse de la maison.
Jalousie, haine, pouvoir : quatre femmes se livrent une lutte à mort pour le plaisir du maître, dans la Chine des années 1920 encore féodale...
Révélation majeure de la jeune littérature chinoise. Épouses et concubines a été porté à l'écran par le show more cinéaste Zhang Yimou et a connu en France un extraordinaire succès. show less