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The Invisible Valley
Lu Beiping is one of 20 million young adults the Chinese government uproots and sends far from their homes for agricultural re-education. And Lu is bored and exhausted. While he pines for romance, instead he’s caught up in a forbidden religious tradition and married off to the foreman’s long-dead daughter so that her soul may rest. The foreman then sends him off to cattle duty up on Mudkettle Mountain, far away from everyone else.
On the mountain, Lu meets an outcast polyamorous family led by a matriarch, Jade, and one of her lovers, Kingfisher. They are woodcutters and practice their own idiosyncratic faith by which they claim to placate the serpent-demon sleeping in the belly of the mountains. Just as the village authorities get wind of Lu’s dalliances with the woodcutters, a typhoon rips through the valley. And deep in the jungle, a giant serpent may be stirring.
The Invisible Valley is a lyrical fable about the shapes into which human affection can be pressed in extreme circumstances; about what is natural and what is truly deviant; about the relationships between the human and the natural, the human and the divine, the self and the other.
On the mountain, Lu meets an outcast polyamorous family led by a matriarch, Jade, and one of her lovers, Kingfisher. They are woodcutters and practice their own idiosyncratic faith by which they claim to placate the serpent-demon sleeping in the belly of the mountains. Just as the village authorities get wind of Lu’s dalliances with the woodcutters, a typhoon rips through the valley. And deep in the jungle, a giant serpent may be stirring.
The Invisible Valley is a lyrical fable about the shapes into which human affection can be pressed in extreme circumstances; about what is natural and what is truly deviant; about the relationships between the human and the natural, the human and the divine, the self and the other.
400 pages, Paperback
Published April 3, 2018
7 people are currently reading
350 people want to read
About the author
Su Wei
32 books5 followersLike many Chinese writers of his generation, Su Wei spent his teenage years being “re-educated” through farm labor in the countryside, working for ten years on a rubber plantation in the mountains of tropical Hainan Island. He is known for his nonfiction essays as well as for his highly imaginative novels, which are seen as unique in their treatment of the Cultural Revolution. He left China in 1989, and since 1997 he has taught Chinese language and literature at Yale University. The Invisible Valley is his first book to be translated into English.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
12-book-challenge
January 24, 2023Extraordinary novel about one of the millions of young people sent into the depths of China to work the land during the Cultural Revolution. It's about culture, and cults, and superstition (the latter two very much including Mao worship), and love in all its forms and how close that comes to hate, and how rotten people can be to one another, and the experience of being in the depths of nature for good and ill, and the need for stories, and I don't know what. 'Lyrical fable' probably covers it. Very funny at points, very acute, absolutely haunting.
The translation is absolutely stunning: it reads like a novel, not a translated novel. It is regrettable the publisher didn't put a fraction of the effort into laying out the ebook (the section breaks are borked on Kobo, which is confusing as the text just runs on).
Read for the 'randoms recommend me 12 books' challenge, and the first absolute winner of this year's challenge. Wonderful.
The translation is absolutely stunning: it reads like a novel, not a translated novel. It is regrettable the publisher didn't put a fraction of the effort into laying out the ebook (the section breaks are borked on Kobo, which is confusing as the text just runs on).
Read for the 'randoms recommend me 12 books' challenge, and the first absolute winner of this year's challenge. Wonderful.
June 22, 2021
4 / 5
this book surprised me. it was weird, but also very fascinating and touching. the writing and translation were sooo lush and beautiful. i really liked the commentary on societal morals and the different kinds of morals different societies have, as well as on nature, love, art, and education.
the gay relationship (ish) came as another pleasant surprise. i find it interesting that kingfisher was the one to come to their defense. he was saying how loving someone or something can never be bad, can never be a sin, and i really appreciated that deeply, even if i never liked his character.
this book surprised me. it was weird, but also very fascinating and touching. the writing and translation were sooo lush and beautiful. i really liked the commentary on societal morals and the different kinds of morals different societies have, as well as on nature, love, art, and education.
the gay relationship (ish) came as another pleasant surprise. i find it interesting that kingfisher was the one to come to their defense. he was saying how loving someone or something can never be bad, can never be a sin, and i really appreciated that deeply, even if i never liked his character.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 5, 2018
I have read some wonderful novels recently, but I can't remember when I've been so enthralled and invested in a story. Lu Beiping's coming of age finds him far from his home, attempting to negotiate the dangerous politics of his Maoist work camp, the tangled mysteries of Mudkettle Mountain, the superstitions and practicalities of the Driftfolk, and the very land itself, a compelling character in its own right. Like Lu Beiping, I experienced something like sensory overload; like Lu Beiping, I wanted to get to the heart of his ghost-wife's mystery. The characters here are remarkably complex and believable, and the story's ambivalence about the supernatural - the weirdsnake on the mountain, the ghosts and spirits and shadows everywhere - feels utterly authentic and necessary. This novel is both political and personal, and I know I will be reading it again.
This is a gift for English readers. Austin Woerner's translation of Su Wei's prose is a triumph, and I hope there will be more translations to come.
"Like I've always said, in this world we live in now, bearing and sowing and sharing affection ought never to be a sin. Killing, lying, and wasting are the only sins. Folks like us, who lay our souls open to the sun every day just praying we'll live to watch it rise the next morning, have got no place fussing about virtues and commandments. When goodness is to be had, have it; that's all we can do."
Edited to Add: My longer review is available in my "Looking Back on Genre History" segment on Episode 544 of the StarShipSofa podcast.
This is a gift for English readers. Austin Woerner's translation of Su Wei's prose is a triumph, and I hope there will be more translations to come.
"Like I've always said, in this world we live in now, bearing and sowing and sharing affection ought never to be a sin. Killing, lying, and wasting are the only sins. Folks like us, who lay our souls open to the sun every day just praying we'll live to watch it rise the next morning, have got no place fussing about virtues and commandments. When goodness is to be had, have it; that's all we can do."
Edited to Add: My longer review is available in my "Looking Back on Genre History" segment on Episode 544 of the StarShipSofa podcast.
February 6, 2019
It took me awhile to get into the flow of this, but from the midway point to the end I moved through it quickly. Thoughtful, with an unhurried pace and several different story layers weaving themselves together through the perspective of Lu Beiping. I thought I wasn't very emotionally engaged until I realized I was crying at the end.
I picked it up after seeing a review call it a Chinese Gothic. I'm still unsure about that description, but it does have classic Gothic elements (isolated young person, vaguely supernatural natural elements, untrustworthy authority figures, family betrayal).
CW: references to cannibalism, suicide, mass starvation, incest, dubious consent, livestock death. Scenes of violence against children and a pregnant woman. One use of a homophobic slur. Non-graphic sex (m/f, m/m). Polyandry. Ghosts?
I picked it up after seeing a review call it a Chinese Gothic. I'm still unsure about that description, but it does have classic Gothic elements (isolated young person, vaguely supernatural natural elements, untrustworthy authority figures, family betrayal).
CW: references to cannibalism, suicide, mass starvation, incest, dubious consent, livestock death. Scenes of violence against children and a pregnant woman. One use of a homophobic slur. Non-graphic sex (m/f, m/m). Polyandry. Ghosts?
February 3, 2018
Totally enthralling and vivid - Lu Beiping's coming of age is a seething, turbulent, unpredictable story full of ghosts and the invisible leylines of social strictures. Wei's writing (in translation, anyway!) is so vivid, it throws sparks.
August 13, 2019
Lu Beiping works in a communist agricultural reeducation camp. One day, he finds a sheet of paper on the road that causes him to get married to the ghost of his boss's daughter. He never met his boss's daughter, and now he can't - she's dead. After the wedding Lu Beiping's boss (and, uh, ghost step-father) re-assigns him to herd the cows in the mountain above the camp. Up on the mountain Lu falls in with a family of polygamist woodcutters who teach him *all* about sex, and generally make him question his most basic assumptions about life.
I found this book in the sci-fi section and the blurb on the back of my copy makes it sounds like it might be a fantasy novel. Nope. What ya got here is a coming-of-age novel, though it's not quite like anything else I've ever read.
Like any other coming of age novel, Lu has his trials and hardships, and winds up with a broader & more mature worldview. However, there's a long section that juxtaposes sex with the smell of a simmering pot of meat. There's torture & cockfights and a giant snake god that everyone's scared of. Plus a cow gives birth, there're two interlocking love triangles, and a character who grows illegal tobacco has sex with animals and everyone thinks it's hilarious (instead of horrifying).
Possibly because this is the first contemporary Chinese novel I've read, I often had no idea why the characters in this book do the things they do (like, uh, get ghost-married). They are believable people, though, and by the end I was invested in Lu & all his buddies.
Cultural unfamiliarity was fun for me - many of the naturalistic figures of speech & allegory were new and interesting to me - but I know I missed out on a lot of the books' deeper symbology and nuances. Despite that, and despite the slow build to the plot (ghost marriage is not nearly as interesting as you'd think), once the action starts up on Mudkettle Mountain it's a quick & compelling read.
I found this book in the sci-fi section and the blurb on the back of my copy makes it sounds like it might be a fantasy novel. Nope. What ya got here is a coming-of-age novel, though it's not quite like anything else I've ever read.
Like any other coming of age novel, Lu has his trials and hardships, and winds up with a broader & more mature worldview. However, there's a long section that juxtaposes sex with the smell of a simmering pot of meat. There's torture & cockfights and a giant snake god that everyone's scared of. Plus a cow gives birth, there're two interlocking love triangles, and a character who grows illegal tobacco has sex with animals and everyone thinks it's hilarious (instead of horrifying).
Possibly because this is the first contemporary Chinese novel I've read, I often had no idea why the characters in this book do the things they do (like, uh, get ghost-married). They are believable people, though, and by the end I was invested in Lu & all his buddies.
Cultural unfamiliarity was fun for me - many of the naturalistic figures of speech & allegory were new and interesting to me - but I know I missed out on a lot of the books' deeper symbology and nuances. Despite that, and despite the slow build to the plot (ghost marriage is not nearly as interesting as you'd think), once the action starts up on Mudkettle Mountain it's a quick & compelling read.
December 8, 2022
This is an unexpectedly beautiful, mysterious book set on Hainan Island during a period of Chinese Revolutionary history that will be new territory for most English readers. You don't need to know much before you start reading however; Su Wei provides everything the reader needs to follow Lu Beiping in his jungle adventures. I think Lu Beiping is one of the most relatable main characters I've read in the last few years - even though readers are unlikely to have experienced anything like what he does, his reactions to the challenges he faces are instantly recognizable and sympathetic. This book has a beautiful undertheme of openness that Lu Beiping both carries and is the foil for.
The translation is nothing short of amazing. There are many very good Chinese-to-English translators out there, but this book was head and shoulders above anything else I've read.
The translation is nothing short of amazing. There are many very good Chinese-to-English translators out there, but this book was head and shoulders above anything else I've read.
March 14, 2019
This was all-around gorgeous: the prose, the characters, the world-building, the narrative arcs. I'm still processing the work as a whole but I'd absolutely recommend giving it a read! It's the sort of novel that will end up being studied in college classrooms in coming years, and will delight students in the process!
June 22, 2020
Beautiful, haunting, unique.
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November 8, 2021A NICE TRANSLATION!
March 23, 2023
Stunning translation. A zillion stars for the writing/3.5 stars for how much I personally enjoyed the story.
April 6, 2024
A sheepish mystery that teeters towards folk tale town, totters into ghost story territory, but is ultimately a strange little coming-of-age wolf in disguise. Or is the sheep dressed up as a wolf this time? I mean, there’s a mountain to unpack from this stream’s reflection, so I vouch for just getting to it.
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April 16, 2018"The novel stars Lu Beiping, a “re-ed,” one of the many students sent to the Chinese countryside in the 1960s and ’70s to learn from farmers and be reformed. Lu is sent to the tropical jungle island of Hai-nan, where he is torn between the modern Communist movement of which he is not too fond and traditional ideas he considers backward. He is “ghost-married” (married to someone who has already died) to the daughter of the foreman of his work group and sent to Mudkettle Mountain where he will herd cattle in seclusion." - Amy Lantrip
This book was reviewed in the Mar/Apr 2018 issue of World Literature Today magazine. Read the full review by visiting our website:
https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/...
This book was reviewed in the Mar/Apr 2018 issue of World Literature Today magazine. Read the full review by visiting our website:
https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/...
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May 4, 2018Fiction S9389i 2018
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews