Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

May 25, 2009

Seth rated it:

To begin with, a poorly-devised haiku review:

Yu's roller coaster
Is careless with emotions.
Like a bad girlfriend
________________

I'm not really sure what to make of Brothers. I liked it, that much is certain.

The story is expansive and the characters indelible. The insight into the development of Chinese culture over the last four decades was enlightening. The episodes related were heartfelt, both funny and tragic. And sometimes even both simu More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jul 10, 2011

Melissa rated it:

Though it is the longest book I have read in a long time (641 pages), this book went by relatively quickly. It is plot-driven and easy to read, but those are not things I necessarily appreciate in books. The novel starts off well. The brothers' childhoods consist of extreme ups and downs, and their bond as well as the horror of the Chinese Cultural Revolution is extremely believable. Other characters are likewise interesting and layered. During the first two hundred pages or so, I felt deep More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 05, 2010

Craig rated it:

A delightfully bawdy read. I'm not sure how much Brothers teaches about contemporary Chinese history other than it's still in the midst of a massive, nearly out-of-control transformation where the progress made equals that still anticipated--but that's pretty evident to anyone with a CNN ticker-bar awareness of recent Chinese history. Potential readers hoping for deeper insight than this are browsing the wrong title.

Brother's achieves some success in putting a face on the people drivin More...

0 comments like

Nov 01, 2010

Stephen rated it:

I wanted to like this book both because I admire several of Yu Hua's previous novels and because a book this large requires a considerable investment in time. While "Brothers" contains some sections of great humor and others of heart-wrenching tragedy, much of it is like a bande dessinée without pictures: flat, cartoon-like characters of extreme, unbelievable behavior. Moreover, I found the obsession with virginity, hymen-reconstruction surgery, and breast and penis enhancement, well More...

0 comments like

Feb 21, 2010

Mike rated it:

I seem to be immersed (ahem) in a sort of fecal attraction of late. Some strange synchronicity has led me to a small eructation of Body narratives: teaching and re-reading (with enormous pleasure) Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, with its carny carnality, its freak-show delight in the grotesqueries of human bodies, desires, behavior; watching with strange nervous delight as director Nicholas Refn and star Tom Hardy pull off the high-wire-balance of anarchy and aesthetics, of a brutal Punch-and-Judy- More...

8 comments like (15 people liked it)

May 18, 2009

Margot rated it:

There are bodily fluids and bodily functions galore in this earthy tome of brotherly love, affection and betrayal. Baldi Li and Song Gang are step-brothers, but vow to stick together through any adversity when they are orphaned by the Cultural Revolution and shame brought to their parents. Of course, the town beauty Lin Hong tears the brothers apart, by choosing the one who is not initially interested in her over the one who is pursuing her madly. The resulting pain and sorrow and vengeance is t More...

0 comments like

Mar 26, 2009

Diane rated it:

This is a funny, sad, bawdy (be patient, it is terribly bawdy towards the end) and compelling book. It is the story of two brothers beginning before the Cultural Revolution and ending in the 21st century and it is the story of China emerging into a modern country with all the good and the bad that comes along with such change. The story is set in a small town and is told in what seems to be a simple, repetitive manner. The characters are merely a way to move the story and they have no particular More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 15, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine rated it:

Because of its subversive portrait and critique of China's oppression and soul-changing capitalism, Brothers, while a best seller in China, also raised some eyebrows. Critics in the United States, however, embraced Brothers for its enlightening look at the country's social and economic transformation. To be sure, the novel is a ribald satire of both the Cultural Revolution and the distortion of its ideals, and the crude, unsophisticated humor and plot may alienate some readers. Some of this may

More...

0 comments like

Sep 26, 2011

Maria rated it:

this book is a wild ride through china during the cultural revolution & current times. it's disgusting & repulsive, informative, sad, comic, & dark. i'll let you know if i think of any other adjectives. i've never read a book like it before. it's divided into book 1 and 2. i preferred book 1.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 23, 2011

Matt rated it:

This is a humorous, satirical and tragic coming of age story about two brothers coming of age during the Cultural Revolution in China. It follows the protagonist from the age of about 5-8 all the way up to their 40s. The book gets 4 stars because it meets my most important criteria in a book. Did I care about what happened to the characters? Yes, I did. The two protagonists are well fleshed-out and the novel does a good job of showing you what motivates them rather than just telling you, somethi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 25, 2011

Sheila rated it:

I'm a classic book reader. i like to experiment a little on japanese, chinese and korean authors. so far I have read murakami but I like this book better. I call this an idiotic book, light and comical to the point that you would rather not sleep so you can finish the book. The author is a two thumbs up for me:

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 20, 2009

Sheehan rated it:

Apparently this book was originally released as a serial in China, and then eventually published as two volumes a few years later. The book covers the Cultural Revolution in the first half and describes the transition of China's economy to a market socialism in the second half. The Publishers here in the States, definitely should have marketed the English translation as two books, at almost 700 pages the hardcover was cumbersome to carry around...and really, it reads like two separate books an More...

0 comments like

Mar 10, 2009

andreajulia rated it:

This book is amazing. It goes from being hilarious, to depressing, to jaw-dropping and back it made me feel like I'm on a roller coaster. This book reads like it has 300 pages - not once did I think something was redundant or drawn out. In fact, I felt it stopped almost too sudden.

The characters are wonderfully drawn out and jump off the page. This despite the fact that the book often reads like a fable.

Most interesting is the cultural revolution and how it affected the t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 29, 2011

Kathy rated it:

Reviewed at : Mama Kucing Books : Brothers by Yu Hua

A very captivating story. There are parts where the story is rather coarse and seems to be overly exaggerated. I kind of want to vomit when the author describe how Baldy's father died from peeking at women bottom.

The author put the Cultural Revolution in a different perspective. It's very refreshing to see it from the innocents boys eyes who thought nothing much of it while the adults fear for their lives.

However, More...

0 comments like

Mar 30, 2009

Michael rated it:

This book is quite a ride. Moving from the Cultural Revolution to the early 2000's, it tells the story of step-brothers Baldy Li and Song Gang. Baldy Li is an ambitious ne'er do well, and Song Gang is a quiet, steadfast man. It's interesting to see a fictional account of China's current economic growth. At around the 500 page mark, the book spins off its prior course for the final 130 pages, becoming pretty sexually explicit (especially for a novel from mainland China). Yu Hua has written anothe More...

0 comments like

Feb 03, 2011

Caitlin rated it:

This was a really good read. Brothers was written in a way that I've never seen before, which I found to be both refreshing and intriguing. I really enjoyed learning about the Chinese culture and feel that I understand so much more than I did before about how different some things are over there, but also how grief, pain, and uncertainty are universal experiences. This book was set during the Chinese Revolution in the late 60's or early 70's. I never knew how terrible it was for a majority o More...

0 comments like

Jan 29, 2012

Dorothée rated it:

Ce roman-fleuve retrace les trajectoires diamétralement opposées de deux "frères" de la Révolution Culturelle à nos jours. La première partie est la plus réussie, avec ses descriptions très crues des abjections commises par les Gardes Rouges, que les deux bambins vivent aux premières loges. Beaucoup de force dans l'écriture et dans la narration, beaucoup d'émotions aussi. La seconde partie, qui se concentre sur l'ascension de l'un des deux frères, et les malheurs du second, est moins r More...

0 comments like

Jan 29, 2012

Stan rated it:

Yu Hua 余华 has written a memorable work Brothers 兄弟 that will captivate reader's with a taste for exotic literary experiences, but it may not meet of the liking of those offended by crude, wanton humor. A wreckless ribald tale of two step-brothers and their unique relationship, it recounts the history of nearly fifty years of changes in Chinese society from the Maoist era to the contemporary 'get rich is glorious' ethos. The story begins with an account of how one of the brothers was nabbed for More...

0 comments like

Aug 28, 2011

David rated it:

After finishing the first of the two linked books which make up this sprawling novel, I wrote that "it brought me back to my experiences in China in 1990 and 1992. The book has been thoroughly delightful but I can see where the wide-ranging opinions posted on Goodreads may come from. To someone unfamiliar with Chinese culture, society and history, I suspect it is a much less engrossing - perhaps simply a bizarre - read. There are also many echoes from classic texts (Cao's "Hong Lo Meng More...

1 comment like

Apr 11, 2010

Meredith rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 18, 2011

Martin rated it:

Long, sprawling, epic, grotesque, funny, sad, political - all these adjectives add up to "Brothers". Something of the essence of the writing is always lost in translation but when there are such cultural disparities, such as those between China and America, it is difficult to fully comprehend what the writer is giving his reader.

The New York Time Book Review by Jess Row, March 2009, put it best:
"Imagine a novel written by William Dean Howells together with D. More...

0 comments like

Sep 20, 2011

Beverly rated it:

I found the tone of this book quite confusing. Early on the book was supposed to be funny and the tone worked for that. After, many awful things happened, but the tone was still identical to the comedic parts. Also, people's motivation didn't make sense to me - perhaps because I don't understand Chinese people. I couldn't understand how one brother could be so selfish or how people were rarely honest with even those closest to them.

I read this in a book group and we couldn't have h More...

0 comments like

Aug 04, 2011

Angelle rated it:

Blunt to the point of being brutal at times.
This book is much longer than it seems.

Very rarely does a book pull me at such extremes, it made me shed tears of sadness, anger, and laughter. Very intimate look into the life of those involved in the transition of communist and modern China in several angles and characters.

I am really starting to love this author.

0 comments like

Jan 29, 2012

Sheri rated it:

Reading a translation doesn't really permit you to assess a writer's prose, but this was a book where the words charmed me on virtually every page. Yu tells the story of two brothers -- step-brothers, really -- from an inland village in China, following their joint and separate lives from the Cultural Revolution through to the 21st century and China's new entrepreneurial capitalism. Brothers often reminded me of absurdist works I read while in college -- not quite so bizarre as to be surreal i More...

0 comments like

Jul 04, 2011

Becky rated it:

This is a fascinating fictionalized look at the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the years that followed it. The brothers in the title represent different aspects of Chinese culture and how the culture changed from the late 1960s until the early 2000s. Heartbreaking, but at times also very funny.

0 comments like

Jun 19, 2009

Haley rated it:

Originally published as two separate novels, it would have been four/ four and a half stars for just the first half, the story of two brothers growing up in a rural Chinese town during the 1960s/70s cultural revolution. The second half was good, but didn't have the same heart of the first. Overall, though, the book is by turns hilarious, ribald, and heartwarming.

0 comments like

Mar 06, 2011

Stephen rated it:

Loved it, but wished for a better translation. I think it was translated very accurately, however a bit too literally. The english language doesn't fall from this version too easily, but the story is a big wow epic. Lots of fun with Baldy Li, Big Balls Li, and many others.

0 comments like

Apr 16, 2009

Diane rated it:

The lives of brothers Baldi Li and Song Gang span from the Cultural Revolution in their youth to the capitalistic years of today's communist China. Their stories range from bawdy and funny to sad and shocking. Sometimes the stories read like fables; but throughout the book there is a reality that gives us a glimpse into life in China.

0 comments like

Feb 16, 2009

Nlconyers rated it:

Brothers starts before Cultural Revolution and ends in the current day China. After reading this ambitious, riotously funny and horribly sad book, i understand why my Chinese friends, above all, value kindness. I also understand why John Roderick, the American reporter who hid in caves with Chairman Mao during the Long March, said that when you think you know everything about China, it's time to get out--you'll never fully understand China.

1 comment like

Oct 24, 2009

Robert rated it:

I just had an idea about the ending: Cultural revolution, capitalism, space race! I'm a bit slow.
Use your sense of humor with this book. The lives of the people in Liu Town are absurd but true to their time in China. Fascinating stuff.
600+ pages but reads very fast.
Some themes are presented at great length. you won't miss the point, at least.
Squeamish about sex? Stick with Harry Potter or Jan Karon.

Recommended.

0 comments like

reviews