Candy

Rating:
Summary: writing in a haze
Review: China is changing fast and the young people are the energy behind this movement.

The opening of the book tells a story of the main character (Hong) as a young girl. Just one short tale of her life, but it is enough to give you a sense of her home, school, friends and feelings. The rest of the book is primarily set in a new "special economic zone" in the south of china at the time when these zones were newly created. The book focuses on the experiences of young people during this transition period in China. Mian paints a picture of hope and desire stirring within the hearts of her young characters while caution and uncertainty ruled their actions. This is a story about music, self-expression, coming of age and falling in love.

Best of all is Main's poetic style. It must be said that Lingenfelter did a wonderful job in the translation, as the prose is sultry and descriptive. Mian does not immediately detail who the speaker is in each section. The story moves from first to third person - from the south back to Shanghai and introduces characters without setting them up. I appreciated this style. To me it reflected the chaotic life of the main characters. If you enjoy detailed explanations of characters and character motivations in a story or prefer that dialogue to be neatly arranged in quotes identifying every speaker you will have a difficult time following this book. However, if you enjoy poetic prose with a few rock-n-roll lyrics thrown in and changing voices filled with description and emotion you will find Candy a memorable read.

Mian hints that the book is semi-autobiographical. Readers will wonder which of her characters contain her experiences. Not to worry, she has already expressed her desire to write "nakedly" of her own life. I'll certainly read it when she does.

Rating:
Summary: sloppy, choppy and not even fun.
Review: I had to read this book due the all the hype! And that's all that it was... hype. The book follows the twisty windy road of life and thought, of what felt like a self loathing, self doubting teenager. It began to get painful to read. Then it started to really get difficult to read when the author, who wrote the story in diary style, started having portions that were in the 1st person and it would be someone totally different than the main character. It became so difficult to tell who was doing the talking, even though all of the characters seemed to have the same retched lives!! I tried my best to sludge through this book... and made it 3/4 of the way through (after at least a month's time). Finally I had to put any of my original hopes of a thought provoking book with an fresh and raw delivery to rest and put the book out of my misery.

Rating:
Summary: Growing pains
Review: I highly reccomend, excellent read. It shows a look into the culture of a young innocent, yet intelligent girl who turns to drugs to fit it with her new wordly lifestyle. It proves and itnerestign peek to the underbelly of the dirty world of China's drug ridden popular shock culture.

Rating:
Summary: completely fresh
Review: I just picked this book up on a whim one day, and as soon as i started reading it i knew it was different. mian mian's writing style is like nothing i've ever read before. this book takes the normal sex/drugs/rock n' roll novel to a new level.

Rating:
Summary: A worthy read.
Review: I picked this book up on an impulse a few weeks ago, and found it to be an interesting read. The style is about as easy to follow as, say, a Hemingway novel. It's hard to tell whether or not it's the translator who created that style, or if it's ported over somehow from the original Chinese text, but it's very interesting either way.

The story is either amazingly well-written or completely flubbed, I really can't tell. You follow the main character, a chinese girl named Hong (although her name comes up very little), through her life from the age of 18 to her mid 20's. It's full of frequent explanations of recent events, almost as if she's writing a sporadic diary. The constant backtracking, I found, is oddly unnoticable, and the style is quite possibly brilliant. As you follow the story, the character deveolpment is extremely real. So real that you don't necessarilly notice it happening. It's either really well-written, or she did it all by accident (which seems unlikely. :) ). Definetely something that the reader has to decide for themselves, though.

Rating:
Summary: A worthy read.
Review: I picked this book up on an impulse a few weeks ago, and found it to be an interesting read. The style is about as easy to follow as, say, a Hemingway novel. It's hard to tell whether or not it's the translator who created that style, or if it's ported over somehow from the original Chinese text, but it's very interesting either way.

The story is either amazingly well-written or completely flubbed, I really can't tell. You follow the main character, a chinese girl named Hong (although her name comes up very little), through her life from the age of 18 to her mid 20's. It's full of frequent explanations of recent events, almost as if she's writing a sporadic diary. The constant backtracking, I found, is oddly unnoticable, and the style is quite possibly brilliant. As you follow the story, the character deveolpment is extremely real. So real that you don't necessarilly notice it happening. It's either really well-written, or she did it all by accident (which seems unlikely. :) ). Definetely something that the reader has to decide for themselves, though.

Rating:
Summary: What if Courtney Love wrote a book and nobody cared?
Review: It appears that one of the publishing world's latest minor crazes is to indulge the whining, self-absorbed, oh-so-shocking musings of China's disaffected youth culture. Wei Hui's SHANGHAI BABY, Chun Sue's BEIJING DOLL, and Mian Mian's CANDY are the undeserving recipients of far too much attention (and far to much of the precious few translation resources devoted to serious Chinese literature) for books whose only raison d'etre is their ostensible shock value from having originated in mainland China. The formula is simple: write explicitly about sex and drugs, use a few four-letter words, get banned by Beijing, and get published in the West as underground novels.

Regretably, CANDY wastes the talents of a potentially good writer on material that's been said and done a hundred times before. Mian Mian demonstrates flashes of stylistic brilliance and acute observational powers, but the dreary repetitiveness and pointless trite meanderings of her story overwhelm the merits of her work. Her structural devices of changing narrative perspective from first to third person not only fail to enrich her novel, they actually amplify its shortcomings. Her main character, Hong, is just as boring and childish whether we listen to her voice or hear another character talking about her.

In place of an exposition of life in modern urban China, Mian Mian gives us a story of a music and drug culture centered on distinctively unlikable protagonists. Her Shanghai world is populated by artist wannabes, semi-educated, superficial, and over-pampered childen who would rather sleep and drink and go clubbing than deal with the real world. It's China starring Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson - gag me! Even worse, her story tells us next to nothing about Shenzhen or Shanghai (what other reason would anyone have for reading this book?). Change the characters' names to Cindy and Bill, and CANDY would feel like it was set in London or Los Angeles, or even Louisville for that matter.

Aside from its author being from China (although she no longer lives there), this book offers nothing new, nothing that hasn't been said before about the turgid, angst-ridden lives of disaffected post-adolescents who haven't yet realized they are post anything. Mian Mian's characters - walking cliches spouting tired references to Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain - demonstrate that present-day Chinese culture, the world capitol of intellectual theft and brand piracy, cannot even experience rebellion and disillusion with originality. CANDY is the novelistic equivalent of a pair of counterfeit Nikes.

At times, the book lapses into literary spells that are unintentionally self-parodying:

"Die in the prime of youth, and leave a beautiful corpse: what an intensely beautiful dream that was."
"The only meaning in my life was that my life was meaningless."
"Sometimes, merely getting into the bathtub would make him start to cry....He wondered, If the shower had eyes, would it be sad?"
"Never forget who you are (even if you end up having a lot of money someday)."
"The world was changing, and I felt as though I no longer had any heroes....I'd long ago stopped wondering about the difference between blue skies and suffering."

Ouch, ouch, ouch!! Speaking of suffering, save yourself the experience and skip CANDY. Listen to some Nirvana with an Alannis Morisette chaser, watch "Trainspotting" or "Sid and Nancy" or "Beavis and Butthead" and you'll get the same message a lot quicker. If you really want to read about life in China, try Chen Ran (A PRIVATE LIFE), Ma Jian (RED DUST), Geling Yan (THE LOST DAUGHTER OF HAPPINESS), Lan Samantha Chang (INHERITANCE), or any of Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Hong Ying, Gao Xingjian, or Ha Jin.

2 Stars for artistic potential and the hope that next time, Mian Mian looks further than her own navel for something to write about.

Rating:
Summary: A relateable look into the Chinese underworld
Review: It's nice to find that even halfway around the world, other people are sharing your pain.

I like to read books twice, and although the first time it was mainly a diary of a young girls spiral into the world of sex and heroin, the second time it was a chilling memoir. A release. A warning. The narrator is candid and brutally honest. She brings up a thousand things we all think and feel, and in much prettier language than most of us could ever dream. It's a compelling story, and I highly recommend it to anyone sick of the average fairy-tale ending.

Rating:
Summary: Insanely Real
Review: This book was a slap in face in so many different ways. The story was so bittersweet, touching and completely real in a way most books aren't. The writing style was honest and strong. Candy is moving and a book you won't ever forget.