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Seems like forever since a reading update. Looking at my Goodreads, I see that--what with all the disruption to my routine--it took me three weeks to get through my most recent novel. Sometimes travel is a great opportunity to get through something, but more often it means I'm so distracted that I forget I even have a book with me.
Thanks exactly what happened on the ride back from St Louis. It was a full train, so after the fella settled in on the aisle side, I took out my paperback and slid it into the seat pocket in front of me. Then I remembered that part of the reason for booking an afternoon run was to enjoy the fall scenery speeding by. So I headed to the café car--and fell into a conversation with a rotating cast of strangers that occupied me for the next four hours. By the time I got back to my seat, the four gay guys heading up to Chicago for a weekend on the razzle had finished two bottles of wine and they swept me up into their antics so fully that I was half a block from the station before I remembered my book.
No problem, it was a used bargain anyway, I figured I'd just rebuy it. But I was impatient to finish it and didn't want to wait for delivery. It was published last year, so not necessarily recent enough to be in stores but likely to be found in library collections. Checking the catalog when I got home, I found it available at a local branch of the Chicago Public Library and resolved to do something I'd successfully avoided for 31 years in Chicago: get my library card.
It was kind of a frustrating experience. I was in kind of a mood when I got there and it wasn't helped by the woman at the front desk who spoke instructions in a quiet voice and didn't explain them. Whenever I asked for clarification, she just repeated herself, and when I got frustrated, she made a remark about "some people" to the next person in line. Well, whatever; Big Red told me afterwards that the Edgewater Branch is not the best, so maybe I'll give the one in RP a try.
The book in question was An excess male by Maggie Shen King. I knew nothing about her, but the blurb looked interesting and the story hooked me in. She alternates between several narrators, which I felt was a good technique since it builds sympathy for each one in turn. Moreover, the focus of the novel is on relationship dynamics, so it helps the reader understand the conflicts and miscues which occur between the four main characters.
Set in near-future China, the novel starts out as a domestic drama: Due to the lopsided sex ratio, the State has legalised polyandry and one of the "excess males" seeks to marry a woman with two husbands already. Then, after you're invested in the characters, it pivots to thriller in a way that doesn't feel heavy-handed. The protagonists discover new aspects to themselves, but they don't magically develop any powerful skills they weren't invested with previously.
She also wraps it up nicely. The setting is too dystopian to allow a genuine happy ending, so were left with probably the best that could be expected under the circumstances. Everyone's worse off in some ways, but they've all grown to appreciate each other on a deeper level than before, and King allows us hope that maybe things won't always be so dire.
If there's one thing that left me unsatisfied, it's the world-building. The tech level isn't substantially different than our own even though it's stated that the "excess male" protagonist's fathers were already subject to similar marriage restrictions and rigid matchmaking procedures 40 years earlier, seemingly placing the action about 50 years from now. The technological development just doesn't seem to match the amount of social development that's supposedly taken place.
But that's a small problem. As Le Guin said, even when it's set in the far future, science fiction is really about the present, and King's book is clearly a critique of the PRC and, specifically, their invasive measures of social engineering and surveillance. I also found it interesting how cynical she is about sexism in an East Asian context; despite the fact that their scarcity should give them more bargaining power, women are still depicted as bearing a disproportionate domestic burden.
Thanks exactly what happened on the ride back from St Louis. It was a full train, so after the fella settled in on the aisle side, I took out my paperback and slid it into the seat pocket in front of me. Then I remembered that part of the reason for booking an afternoon run was to enjoy the fall scenery speeding by. So I headed to the café car--and fell into a conversation with a rotating cast of strangers that occupied me for the next four hours. By the time I got back to my seat, the four gay guys heading up to Chicago for a weekend on the razzle had finished two bottles of wine and they swept me up into their antics so fully that I was half a block from the station before I remembered my book.
No problem, it was a used bargain anyway, I figured I'd just rebuy it. But I was impatient to finish it and didn't want to wait for delivery. It was published last year, so not necessarily recent enough to be in stores but likely to be found in library collections. Checking the catalog when I got home, I found it available at a local branch of the Chicago Public Library and resolved to do something I'd successfully avoided for 31 years in Chicago: get my library card.
It was kind of a frustrating experience. I was in kind of a mood when I got there and it wasn't helped by the woman at the front desk who spoke instructions in a quiet voice and didn't explain them. Whenever I asked for clarification, she just repeated herself, and when I got frustrated, she made a remark about "some people" to the next person in line. Well, whatever; Big Red told me afterwards that the Edgewater Branch is not the best, so maybe I'll give the one in RP a try.
The book in question was An excess male by Maggie Shen King. I knew nothing about her, but the blurb looked interesting and the story hooked me in. She alternates between several narrators, which I felt was a good technique since it builds sympathy for each one in turn. Moreover, the focus of the novel is on relationship dynamics, so it helps the reader understand the conflicts and miscues which occur between the four main characters.
Set in near-future China, the novel starts out as a domestic drama: Due to the lopsided sex ratio, the State has legalised polyandry and one of the "excess males" seeks to marry a woman with two husbands already. Then, after you're invested in the characters, it pivots to thriller in a way that doesn't feel heavy-handed. The protagonists discover new aspects to themselves, but they don't magically develop any powerful skills they weren't invested with previously.
She also wraps it up nicely. The setting is too dystopian to allow a genuine happy ending, so were left with probably the best that could be expected under the circumstances. Everyone's worse off in some ways, but they've all grown to appreciate each other on a deeper level than before, and King allows us hope that maybe things won't always be so dire.
If there's one thing that left me unsatisfied, it's the world-building. The tech level isn't substantially different than our own even though it's stated that the "excess male" protagonist's fathers were already subject to similar marriage restrictions and rigid matchmaking procedures 40 years earlier, seemingly placing the action about 50 years from now. The technological development just doesn't seem to match the amount of social development that's supposedly taken place.
But that's a small problem. As Le Guin said, even when it's set in the far future, science fiction is really about the present, and King's book is clearly a critique of the PRC and, specifically, their invasive measures of social engineering and surveillance. I also found it interesting how cynical she is about sexism in an East Asian context; despite the fact that their scarcity should give them more bargaining power, women are still depicted as bearing a disproportionate domestic burden.
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