Alice Poon's Blog, page 7

"The Green Phoenix" Made It to Bustle's List

Today was just an ordinary day, until I saw on Twitter Bustle.com's List of "11 Historical Novels by Women To Look Forward To This Fall"!

You guessed it - The Green Phoenix: A Novel of the Woman Who Re-Made Asia, Empress Xiaozhuang is on that List!!

A tantalizing story of one of history's most fascinating women, The Green Phoenix will show readers a world like they've never seen before. - Sadie Trombetta, BUSTLE

Yippee!

https://www.bustle.com/p/11-historica...

Book Review - Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is a compelling family saga spanning three generations set in one of the most tumultuous and inglorious periods in China’s recent history. It is an ambitious novel that attempts to express the heartbreaking experiences of the characters in times of painful afflictions in the abstract language of classical music. I’m giving this novel 4.3 stars.

As a total layman to the field of classical music, I am not in a position to judge whether the author’s attempt has succeeded or not. But as a reader of historical novels, I love this work and think that it excels in telling a profoundly sad story of loyalty and betrayal between friends, family love and guilt, against a backdrop of insane political struggles and human brutality during the Anti-Right Campaign, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen violent crackdown on students.

I had previously read a few non-fiction titles about this historical span: Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China, The Doctor Who Was Followed by Ghosts: The Family Saga of a Chinese Woman Doctor, Will the Boat Sink the Water?: The Life of China's Peasants, and Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang. Those books made me vow never to read about that period again. I hesitated for a long while before finally picking up this book. While reading it, my heart was once again drowned in deep anger and disillusionment. I can never never understand why there was this non-stop repetition of human cruelty and inanity in the name of some ideological shenanigans.

I applaud Thien’s effort through her novel in reminding us yet again the ultimate futility of repression of the human spirit; an individual’s yearning for freedom of expression is only human nature.

Her writing is fluid and full of imagery. For my personal taste though, the imagery is sometimes a bit too rich.

These are passages that I found particularly affecting:

I think, you can look at a person and know they are full of words. Maybe the words are withheld due to pain or privacy, or maybe subterfuge. Maybe there are knife-edged words waiting to draw blood.

It was a time of chaos, of bombs and floods, when love songs streamed from the radios and wept down the streets. Music sustained weddings, births, rituals, work, marching, boredom, confrontation and death; music and stories, even in times like these, were a refuge, a passport, everywhere.

In this country, rage had no place to exist except deep inside, turned against oneself. This is what had become of her son, he had used his anger to tear himself apart.

Ba doesn’t even know how afraid he is, she thought. His generation has gotten so used to it, they don’t even know that fear is the primary emotion they feel.




View all my reviews

Historical Novel Society's New Feature on "The Green Phoenix"

A few days ago I was interviewed by Cynthia Anderson, historical novelist and contributor to Historical Novel Society’s features section, about my new novel The Green Phoenix: A Novel of the Woman Who Re-Made Asia, Empress Xiaozhuang. This morning, I was so happy to see the feature article live on HNS’s website!

Link to the article:-

https://historicalnovelsociety.org/th...

Book Review - Roseblood by Paul Doherty

Roseblood by Paul Doherty

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This was a fascinating page-turner with head-spinning plot twists and a rather predictable ending. The cast is made up of mostly fictional characters, including the two protagonists.

Simon Roseblood is a loyal chancery clerk of John Beaufort’s Lancastrian household, who are staunch supporters of King Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. Amadeus Sevigny is a chancery clerk of the ambitious York household (Duke of York, his wife Cecily Neville and their nephew Richard Neville) who have set their eyes on the throne. Rivalry between Roseblood and Sevigny is further complicated by intrusion on the scene of a vengeful group of French mercenaries who are bent on annihilating the Beauforts, whom they blame for the massacre in a French village years before. After many twists and turns, Sevigny finds himself in love with Roseblood’s beautiful daughter and being hated by Cecily Neville for a blame he is innocent of. It is enough to make him decide to change allegiance.

Real historical characters are barely featured throughout the novel until the final two chapters.

Overall, it was an entertaining read with very meticulous descriptions of gore, stench and filth of medieval London. I’m giving it 4 stars.






View all my reviews

Interview with Wayne Turmel, Historical Novelist

I had a delightful chat with Wayne Turmel, author of Acre's Bastard: Historical Fiction from the Crusades, on his blog about my new novel The Green Phoenix: A Novel of the Woman Who Re-Made Asia, Empress Xiaozhuang.

Here's the link to the interview:-

http://wayneturmel.com/2017/08/ancien...

Interview with Ricepaper Magazine

With the imminent release of my new historical novel The Green Phoenix, I was delighted and honored to be invited for an interview with Ricepaper Magazine, a Vancouver-based Canadian literary magazine published by the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop.

Here’s the link to the entire interview posted on the magazine’s website:-

https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2017/08/...

Book Review - Coming Up for Air

Coming Up for Air by George Orwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


As with Orwell’s other books, I loved his endearing trademark of dry wit and humor in his powerful storytelling. This novel would probably resonate with anyone who has ever experienced an urge for an escapist indulgence. I would have given this book five stars had it not been for the description of wicked little boys killing baby birds for fun.

This is a story about a middle-aged man trying to find an escape from boredom, fear and anxieties about aging, impending disaster and existence in general. In modern day term: mid-life crisis. He lives in England with his family in a working-class suburban home and has a mundane job as an insurance salesman. The timeline is the interim period between the two world wars. He hopes to find a little relief from the daily pressures of living by re-visiting his childhood town in the countryside, of which he retains fond memories. Is he successful? You can probably guess.

[P.S. Above all, this novel is a sobering reminder of the horrors of war.]





View all my reviews

Book Review - Guernica

Guernica by Dave Boling

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was one of those reads that don’t strike a chord in me. I’m giving the novel 3.5 stars. There’s nothing wrong with the writing. On the whole, the storytelling is skillfully executed, with sympathetic characters and descriptive setting, evoking sense of place and time. The description of the war scenes and aftermath in the last third of the book is particularly piquant.

It is a historical novel set in Guernica in the days leading up to the Second World War. The story is mainly about the experiences of three Basque peasant brothers and their loved ones as they live through the dark days of the Spanish Civil War. Loosely interlaced with the main story is the snippet that tells how Pablo Picasso gets inspiration for his famous mural titled “Guernica”.

My feeling is that the novel reads like a collation of short stories. Well told as the separate stories are, there is a lack of overall cohesiveness. I can't relate to any of the characters on an emotional level. Also, I find the background of the Spanish Civil War a bit sketchy – I was expecting more historical details from the novel.






View all my reviews

Book Review - Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart

Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart by John Guy

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I've given this book 5 full stars. It took me an inordinate amount of time to finish it due to the humongous cast of characters and the tangled relationships that the Tudor and Stuart family trees exhibit. Now that the reading is done, I can say that I’m truly impressed by this luminous, expertly researched biography of the gracious, witty, brave and ill-fated Scottish Queen, from whom every subsequent British ruler has been descended.

Mary Stuart was crowned Queen of Scotland when she was less than a year old. As the only daughter of James V, granddaughter of Margaret Tudor and great-granddaughter of Henry VII of England, she had a rightful claim to the English throne.

At the age of six, under the auspices of Mary’s powerful maternal uncles at the French court, the de Guises, she was sent to France to be betrothed to the dauphin Francis. They were married when Mary was fifteen (in 1558). In 1559, Henry II of France died and the dauphin was crowned Francis II. A year later, Mary’s mother, who was ruling Scotland as sole regent for the absent Queen, died. Six months thereafter, Mary’s husband, King Francis II, also died. The ambitious de Guises sent eighteen-year-old Mary back to Scotland, envisioning a unified claim to the thrones of Scotland, France and England. It was there and then that her nightmare began.

On the one hand, Mary was immediately plunged into a factional melee of violent Scottish tribal politics, which were often tinged with religious sectarianism and always motivated by the nobles’ self-interests. On the other hand, Elizabeth I of England did her best to clamp down on Mary (one of her demands was so draconian as to dictate whom Mary could marry), as she was fearful that Mary might usurp her throne (her fear being constantly magnified by her secretary William Cecil).

In her home turf, Mary found herself surrounded by treacherous, vicious and depraved courtiers, including her sly and duplicitous half-brother James Stuart (Earl of Moray). Her de Guise relations used and abandoned her as situations warranted and were hardly a source of support. Unfortunate for Mary, her trusting and big-hearted nature would often land her in a perilous position. Her predicament was further exacerbated by constant threat of religious war all over Europe (Catholicism vs. Protestantism). As witty and tenacious as she was, the odds were always stacked against her. Despite all, Mary still strove to preserve her reign as the Scottish Queen and to claim her legitimate right to be Elizabeth’s successor.

The last third of the book unfolds like a thriller/mystery novel, as Mary tried to eke out some breathing space for herself by seeking political marriage. She first wedded Lord Darnley, an English royal whose maternal grandmother was Margaret Tudor, and who would thus strengthen Mary’s claim to the English throne. Then when self-serving and deceitful Darnley was murdered, she married Lord Bothwell, a powerful and ruffian Scottish lord, who also betrayed her trust in times of need. The melodrama of her life culminated in 1568 when Mary naively tried to seek protection from Elizabeth but ended up being captured on English soil, where she would be under house arrest for the following eighteen years. In 1586, out of desperation, she fell into the trap that William Cecil had set up and took part in a madcap assassination plot against Elizabeth. She was tried in October 1586 and executed on February 8, 1587.

It is impossible not to feel sympathy for this hapless but good-hearted Queen, whose only flaw was perhaps her deep emotional need to be loved.



View all my reviews

Release Date for "The Green Phoenix" - September 1, 2017

Hong Kong-based publisher Earnshaw Books will be releasing my historical epic titled The Green Phoenix on September 1, 2017.

For a peek of the book cover image (which I absolutely love!), please go to my profile photo page:

https://www.goodreads.com/photo/autho...

Here are the book description and blurbs by Paul French and Susan Blumberg-Kason that appear on the back cover of the book:

With the fate of East Asia hanging in the balance, one Mongolian woman manipulates her lovers, sons and grandsons through war and upheaval to create an empire that lasted for 250 years.

The Green Phoenix tells the story of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, born a Mongolian princess who became a consort in the Manchu court and then the Qing Dynasty’s first matriarch. She lived through harrowing threats, endless political crises, personal heartaches and painful losses to lead a shaky Empire out of a dead end. The story is set against a turbulent canvas as the Chinese Ming Dynasty is replaced by the Qing. Xiaozhuang guides her husband, her lover, her son and her grandson - all emperors and supreme leaders of the Qing Empire - to success against the odds.


“So much of imperial Chinese history is an enigma; a world we, as outsiders, are shut out off. Alice Poon’s novelised life of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang fictionally pulls back the curtain on Manchu court life and lets us step into a forbidden world.”

- Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking


“Alice Poon has written a masterpiece of Chinese history little known in the West. It's a story of love, betrayal and loyalty, and shows how one woman inspired the reunification of China. For so long the West has fixated on the end of the Qing dynasty, but as Poon beautifully recreates in her book, the real heroine of the Qing is the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang. Never before has this story been told in English, and it's arguably the most important historical novel of early Qing Dynasty China.”

- Susan Blumberg-Kason, author of Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong