The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 2 March 2006
by Gao Xingjian
This is a small collection of short stories by Chinese Nobel laureate Xingjian. In English, he is best known for his epic Soul Mountain. He has published a few stories in various venues, including The New Yorker, and two of those are included amongst the six printed in this small volume. Xingjian has an almost surrealist and existential style, which made his novel an intense read and makes these stories somewhat dense. Their lack of overall conventional structure, their dreamy quality, and their frequent lack of resolution might mean they are not for all readers. Yet Xingjian brings an interesting cultural aspect to his writing, and a vivid and unusual documentary style. It would be hard to say that these stories convey the talent that earned him the Nobel Prize in 2000, but they might serve as a good introduction to his complex viewpoint.
Both The Temple and The Accident appeared in The New Yorker in 2003 and are, perhaps, the most accessible stories in the collection. The first is about a young Chinese couple on their honeymoon and the unscheduled stop they make at a mountain village. The second is a stark and chilling retelling of a bloody bus accident in a major Chinese city, and has a vivid sense of place and time. In the Park is a dreamy conversation between a man and a woman meeting for the first time in years. Their history is vaguely implied as they observe an aborted assignation amongst the trees and bushes. Cramp is a lonely tale of a swimmer nearly drowning at sea. And, both the title story and In an Instant are told as if in a dream state. Here Xingjian is both obscure and compelling. The surreal style may be hard to read, but he captures well the state of semiconsciousness that comes with a dozy sleep or a driving awareness of brief moments in time.
Also by Xingjian: [Soul Mountain]