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Rating: 
Summary: The best book ever!
Review: I have not read the original version of this work, but the translation lacks originality and art. A beautiful story, but the writing style lacks grace and creativity. This is the only time I have liked a movie better than the book. Do yourself a favor and skip the book. The movie is quite beautiful and moving.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely worth investigating......both novel and movie
Review: It was a really sad story. I feel even more sad after the actor Leslie Cheung(the one who starred Deiyi) commited suicide a couple of days ago. I cried every time I watched the movie. What is really sad about Deiyi is that he could never tell the difference between real life and the life on the stage. So did Leslie Cheung.
Rating:
Summary: the best book ever
Review: It was the first Chinese book for me to read. And I loved it. The whole story keeps searching for escape from the reality, but... There is nowhere to hide. Sometimes it was really hard to read it without crying tears, because Lee really tells the WHOLE story. At the end, no hope is left. No hope. This makes the novel so special.
Rating: 
Summary: Read the Book First, Then See the Movie!
Review: It's been a long time since I've read this book, but I recall that this book will give you a feel for what life was like in China during the Cultural Revolution. It also gives a pretty honest and accurate account of the life of a performer in a Chinese Opera school. I liked the book way better than the movie. The book goes way more into detail than the movie-read the book first, then see the movie, it will make more sense. The pace of the movie is too fast, (I am referring to the sub-titled version),barely showing mere snippets of chapters in the book, leaving the viewer to wonder "Well what happened in the last scene?" I will leave it at this book was fascinating, beautiful, & tragic. Interesting gay love story.
Rating:
Summary: A companion to the movie
Review: The book will deepen your understanding of the movie. The movie, brilliant as it is, plays like a "montage of highlights" and cuts out a lot--as films generally have to do--like what the two heros were doing during the eleven years before they perform one last time. It also ends differently. (By the way, if you're in the US, unless you've seen the DVD, you've only seen part of the film. The US distributor, Miramax, cut around 20 minutes out of the film as it's seen in the rest of the world, making the already fast pace even faster.)
Rating:
Summary: Left me in tears
Review: This book is not at all what I expected. I thought I would learn a little about Chinese drama and music and instead I was able to experience it for myself. I became Dieyi after the first chapter and felt all the pain that he endured. I was able to understand and connect to why he had never learned to tell the difference from fiction and reality. It is worth reading and now I am looking foward to seeing the movie.
Rating:
Summary: Left me in tears
Review: This book is not at all what I expected. I thought I would learn a little about Chinese drama and music and instead I was able to experience it for myself. I became Dieyi after the first chapter and felt all the pain that he endured. I was able to understand and connect to why he had never learned to tell the difference from fiction and reality. It is worth reading and now I am looking foward to seeing the movie.
Rating:
Summary: A companion to the movie
Review: This was beautifully written, and well-worth reading. The way Dieyi almost fuses with his opera role is unsettling and elegant, albeit melodramatic, and it is written in a way that really evokes a sympathy and affection for the characters' position. Drawn in a very rounded way, their vividity is what really jumped out from the page at me.
When you read it, you are almost drawn into the play itself because of the parallels it has to the real life of the characters. It's a comparatively short book, but packs a lot of experience into its' pages. A small but densely packed fireball! Many ends are left unfinished or unresolved, but I think this was intentional...not every story has a happy ending, particularly for people involved in political oppression..... A story of contradictions.
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