Candiss read and liked Trina's review of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China:

"We bought this book before a trip to Beijing in 2005, but Amazon was particularly slow with their delivery and it arrived just a couple of days before our departure. My husband began reading the book on the plane (and even though the book is banned i...more We bought this book before a trip to Beijing in 2005, but Amazon was particularly slow with their delivery and it arrived just a couple of days before our departure. My husband began reading the book on the plane (and even though the book is banned in China, our bags weren't searched so our copy made it into the country without any problem), but didn't finish it until well after we'd returned home. At that point, my interest had waned a bit. In addition, I just don't like to read "sad" books, and my husband had told me some of the more tragic events in the book, so I chose not to read it.

When Wild Swans was chosen as our book group book (by a woman who is somewhat of a Chinese history scholar), I began reading with reluctance. The first half of the book took me a very long time to read, but the second half, I had a hard time putting down. I wondered if I had become hardened to all of the sorrow and suffering, but I think the second half was more compelling because it was when the author began telling her story, from her point of view, and it was easier to put myself into the story (and thus, more heartbreaking).

The writing is first-rate, and I appreciate the epilogue and the introduction to the 2003 edition (which I recommend reading AFTER you've read the book) which chronicle some of the author's difficulties in initally facing her past in China. It is a courageous book, with honest and emotional portrayals of a time in history that is still so little understood by the Western world. I, for one, am grateful to Jung Chang for sharing her family's stories.

I love the pictures of the author and her family that are included in the 2003 edition. I spent the first part of the book frustrated that the edition didn't include a map of China, only to discover that there is a great map in the BACK of the book. These extras, along with the timeline and family tree, help the non-Chinese reader keep track of names and places.

I wish I had been able to read the book before going to China. I think it would have given me a more acurate lense through which to see people and places. But, late is better than never, and I'm so glad to have read the book now.(less) "

Candiss read and liked Martine's review of Wild Swans:

"Wild Swans may well be the most depressing book I've ever read. Don't let that keep you from giving it a try, though, for by some strange mechanism, it also ranks among the most uplifting books I've read, chronicling as it does a courage, resilience ...more Wild Swans may well be the most depressing book I've ever read. Don't let that keep you from giving it a try, though, for by some strange mechanism, it also ranks among the most uplifting books I've read, chronicling as it does a courage, resilience and will to survive which are nothing short of riveting. I could sum the book up by saying it's the greatest ode to courage and resilience ever written, or that it's one of those rare books which make you despair of humanity and then go a long way towards restoring your faith in it, but no, I'm not going to leave it at that. I'm going to do this book justice, because damn it, it deserves it.

For those of you who missed the hype back in the early 1990s, Wild Swans is the true history of three generations of women living through the horrible nightmare that is modern Chinese history. One is the author herself, now a naturalised British citizen. The second is her mother, an earnest Communist who raised a large family at a time which was extremely bad for family life. The third is her grandmother, who was married off as a concubine to a warlord as a girl and lived to see her family suffer for this unfortunate connection again and again. Using these three extraordinary lives as her main focus, Jung Chang tells the history of China's even more extraordinary twentieth century, from the late Qing Dynasty in the first decade of the century to the relatively free 1980s, a period comprising the Republican era, the battle between the Kwomintang and the Communists, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. It's gripping stuff even for those who know their Chinese history, and it blew me away when I first read it halfway through my Chinese degree, making me wonder (for the first time but not the last) whether I really wanted to devote the rest of my life to China. It took me two more years to decide that I did not, but this book, whose memory has always stayed with me, played a large part in that decision. To this day, I vividly remember the horror I experienced when I read the long section about the Cultural Revolution. It brought alive the terror of that particular episode of Chinese history better than any other book I'd read, and it shocked me to my core.

While Wild Swans is largely about the three women mentioned above, the most interesting person in the book (I hesitate to call him a character as he was obviously a very real person) is the author's father, a high-ranking cadre who genuinely believed in the Communist ideals and strove all his life to implement them in daily life. At first, he is infuriating in his refusal to grant his wife and children the privileges to which they are entitled as his relatives (on the grounds that to do so would amount to nepotism and corruption, which is precisely what the Communists are supposed to be trying to eradicate), but as the story progresses, you realise that there is something quite heroic about Mr Chang -- that he is, in his daughter's words, 'a moral man living in a land that [is] a moral void'. By the time the Cultural Revolution rolls around the corner, you feel such admiration for him that you'd personally drag him away from the humiliations and beatings he receives for sticking to his guns if you could, to prevent him having to experience that loss of faith and dreams which is bound to follow. His is a tragedy with a capital T, and it's harrowing -- one of the most painful things I've read, and then some.

Yet for all the personal struggles described in the book (and there are many of them), the main struggling character of Wild Swans is China itself. Chang does a great job chronicling what J.G. Ballard called 'the brain-death of a nation', sharing historical facts in a way non-sinologists will understand and showing the cruelty and mercilessness inherent in the Chinese -- or should that be humanity in general? She does a marvellous job describing the panic and unpredictability of the early Cultural Revolution, when absolutely everybody could be denounced at the drop of a hat, and when pettiness and lust for power reigned. Along the road, she provides fascinating insights into Mao Zedong's selfishness and megalomania, and into the hypocrisy and incongruity of the movements he set in motion, which brutalised human relationships like nothing else ever has. And all these atrocities she juxtaposes with the integrity and courage of her parents and grandmother, who get through it all with some hope and optimism left intact. It's a riveting story, and Chang tells it well.

If I have any complaints about Wild Swans, they concern the first few chapters and the romanisation of names. The early parts of the book, which deal with events the author did not witness herself, feel a bit aloof and lifeless. (It gets better once Chang starts telling about her parents, and once she reaches the part of the story to which she herself was privy (the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution), the book becomes quite unputdownable.) As for the romanisation, I wish the publisher had hired an editor skilled in Pinyin, as Chang's spelling of Chinese names is all over the place (something non-sinologists won't notice, but which is an eyesore to me). These are minor flaws, though, which hardly detract from the overall quality of the book. Wild Swans is an intensely compelling read -- moving, unsettling and unforgettable. It should be compulsory reading for everyone remotely interested in China, or in history in general. (less) "

Candiss read and liked Martine's review of The Anubis Gates:

"Ever wonder what it would be like to travel in time and be able to rewrite parts of history? In The Anubis Gates, Brendan Doyle, a professor of nineteenth-century English literature living in 1983 California, accidentally gets to try his hand at it w...more Ever wonder what it would be like to travel in time and be able to rewrite parts of history? In The Anubis Gates, Brendan Doyle, a professor of nineteenth-century English literature living in 1983 California, accidentally gets to try his hand at it when he is invited by a mad scientist to attend a lecture given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1810 London. Needless to say, an accident prevents Doyle from returning to his own time (it always does in these books, doesn't it?), so he is stuck in early-nineteenth-century London, where he gets to deal with gypsies, underground dens of beggars, an unpleasant clown, a body-shifting werewolf, a young woman disguised as a boy, a brain-washed Lord Byron, assassins, homunculi, legendary beasts, life without antibiotics and last but not least, an ancient Egyptian sorceror who seems to want something from him. What ensues is an off-the-wall tale full of outlandish conspiracies, time travel, Doppelgangers and magic, and yes, a bit of poetry. The evocation of nineteenth-century England isn't entirely convincing (there are some glaring historic and linguistic anachronisms), and the narrative gets a bit predictable at times (despite the plot being so insane), but the action is non stop, the story unfolds at a cracking pace and there are enough inventive and amusing links to actual history and literature to make even the harshest critic chuckle. In short, it's a fun read -- not perfect, but perfectly entertaining, with some interesting ideas to ponder afterwards.

I'm now wondering where *I* would go if I could travel in time...(less) "