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A Lover's Discourse
A story of desire, love and language - and the meaning of home - told through conversations between two lovers
A Chinese woman comes to London to start a new life - away from her dead parents, away from her old world. She knew she would be lonely, but will her new relationship with the Australian-British-German landscape architect bring her closer to this land she has chosen, will their love give her a home?
A Lover's Discourse is an exploration of romantic love told through fragments of conversations between the two lovers. Playing with language and the cultural differences that her narrator encounters as she settles into life in a Britain still reeling from the Brexit vote, Xiaolu Guo shows us how this couple navigate these differences, and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a cramped and stifling flat share in east London... Suffused with a wonderful sense of humour, this intimate and tender novel asks universal questions: what is the meaning of home when we've been uprooted? How can a man and woman be together? And how best to be a woman and a mother?
A Chinese woman comes to London to start a new life - away from her dead parents, away from her old world. She knew she would be lonely, but will her new relationship with the Australian-British-German landscape architect bring her closer to this land she has chosen, will their love give her a home?
A Lover's Discourse is an exploration of romantic love told through fragments of conversations between the two lovers. Playing with language and the cultural differences that her narrator encounters as she settles into life in a Britain still reeling from the Brexit vote, Xiaolu Guo shows us how this couple navigate these differences, and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a cramped and stifling flat share in east London... Suffused with a wonderful sense of humour, this intimate and tender novel asks universal questions: what is the meaning of home when we've been uprooted? How can a man and woman be together? And how best to be a woman and a mother?
271 pages, Hardcover
First published August 13, 2020
125 people are currently reading
4760 people want to read
About the author
Xiaolu Guo
38 books555 followersXiaolu Guo (Simplified Chinese: 郭小櫓 pinyin:guō xiǎo lǔ, born 1973) is a Chinese novelist and filmmaker. She utilizes various media, including film and writing, to tell stories of alienation, introspection and tragedy, and to explore China's past, present and future in an increasingly connected world.
Her novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers was nominated for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. She was also the 2005 Pearl Award (UK) winner for Creative Excellence.
Her novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers was nominated for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. She was also the 2005 Pearl Award (UK) winner for Creative Excellence.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 414 reviews
April 19, 2020
This book, with it’s gorgeous book cover, was a surprise in many ways.
I certainly didn’t expect to read the entire book in thirty minutes. But.... it took another thirty minutes of sitting with a big smile on my face.
The styling is unique - poetic & lyrical - with many pages having only a few words.
“Xiaolu Guo is a Chinese British novelist, memoirist, and film-maker, who explores migration, alienation, memory, personal journeys, feminism translation, and trans national identities”.
Her books have been translated into 28 languages.
Xiaolu grew up in a fishing village with her illiterate grandparents , her parents and brother in Wenling, China.
This small book leaves plenty of room for the readers
interpretation. It’s different- and I liked it.
It explores ‘love’.... ( the universal experiences).....commitment - romantic- the varied degrees of the spectrums.
Here are a few sample excerpts to contemplate:
“A few years after we moved in together, we had this conversation about love at first sight. I remember you said: ‘I don’t believe in love at first sight’.”
“I was taken aback. I thought we were definitely in love at first sight”.
“Why do you think Home is lifeless? — I don’t think home is lifeless. This boat’s our home. But I think an enclosed space with a conventional set up is lifeless”.
“— We Chinese have very vague historical records of everything especially after the Cultural Revolution. We burnt everything original”.
“Chinese people seem to be very adaptable like their trees
— Yes but once the tree grows older you can’t transplant them again. The roots are too embedded into the ground”.
Real love.....
“It’s only real when it’s mixed up with dirt and sweat. Otherwise it’s just for puppies and adolescents”.
“— We are Brexhausted. Everybody has started to hoard medicines. They say some medications might run out once Britton crashes out of the EU”.
”— When did you start to realize what is yours and what is not yours? Do you remember?”
“— I don’t know. I thought everything was mine until I hit thirty”.
“— Why do you want to return to Brexit Britain? Everyone is struggling there.
— So at least I can feel my struggle”.
Xiaolu Gou is an artist with words—a man and woman meet in the UK....
We are invited into their relationship—
—privy to their problem solving solutions - their desires - beliefs - playfulness - sincerity and humor.
This book will be released in stores in October.
Thank you Netgalley, Grove Atlanta, and Xiaolu Gou
I certainly didn’t expect to read the entire book in thirty minutes. But.... it took another thirty minutes of sitting with a big smile on my face.
The styling is unique - poetic & lyrical - with many pages having only a few words.
“Xiaolu Guo is a Chinese British novelist, memoirist, and film-maker, who explores migration, alienation, memory, personal journeys, feminism translation, and trans national identities”.
Her books have been translated into 28 languages.
Xiaolu grew up in a fishing village with her illiterate grandparents , her parents and brother in Wenling, China.
This small book leaves plenty of room for the readers
interpretation. It’s different- and I liked it.
It explores ‘love’.... ( the universal experiences).....commitment - romantic- the varied degrees of the spectrums.
Here are a few sample excerpts to contemplate:
“A few years after we moved in together, we had this conversation about love at first sight. I remember you said: ‘I don’t believe in love at first sight’.”
“I was taken aback. I thought we were definitely in love at first sight”.
“Why do you think Home is lifeless? — I don’t think home is lifeless. This boat’s our home. But I think an enclosed space with a conventional set up is lifeless”.
“— We Chinese have very vague historical records of everything especially after the Cultural Revolution. We burnt everything original”.
“Chinese people seem to be very adaptable like their trees
— Yes but once the tree grows older you can’t transplant them again. The roots are too embedded into the ground”.
Real love.....
“It’s only real when it’s mixed up with dirt and sweat. Otherwise it’s just for puppies and adolescents”.
“— We are Brexhausted. Everybody has started to hoard medicines. They say some medications might run out once Britton crashes out of the EU”.
”— When did you start to realize what is yours and what is not yours? Do you remember?”
“— I don’t know. I thought everything was mine until I hit thirty”.
“— Why do you want to return to Brexit Britain? Everyone is struggling there.
— So at least I can feel my struggle”.
Xiaolu Gou is an artist with words—a man and woman meet in the UK....
We are invited into their relationship—
—privy to their problem solving solutions - their desires - beliefs - playfulness - sincerity and humor.
This book will be released in stores in October.
Thank you Netgalley, Grove Atlanta, and Xiaolu Gou
January 21, 2024
Now shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmith Prize.
This book is the first I have read by the author – an award winning filmmaker, non-fiction writer and fiction writer and who was a judge for the 2019 Booker prize.
I know from having researched her background when having tried (and failed) to predict what influence it may have on that longlist that her best known fictional book is probably “A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers” – and in many ways this book feels like a variation on the basic tenets of that book (Chinese woman immigrates to London, learns English, reflects on the differences between English and Chinese, forms a relationship with someone from a very different cultural background) but one that loses the broken English and dictionary conceit and is instead very explicitly based around (and even has the characters discuss) Roland Barthes “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments” – a book which the author stated in a 2018 Guardian Q&A as the book she most wishes she had written.
The narrator is an unnamed woman – bought up in the Chinese countryside (and I think of peasant background) who after an MA in Sociology and Film Making in Beijing, moves to London in late 2015 (against the background of the Brexit referendum) to do a PhD in Visual Anthopology – he PhD project based around a village in Guangdong Province which collectively specialises in copyings of famous Western paintings.
She struggles with London pub-culture (“What were we supposed to do at night in our rented rooms, if we didn’t drink or watch sports”), English language differences (she takes a doctor’s enquiry into her a family history as asking if she is of peasant/city dweller stock and if her family are Party members “I didn’t expect I would have to carry all this old baggage to England”) and sometimes both (“Liverpool versus Arsenal? I had thought arsenal was a weapons factory, I didn’t know it was a football place too”).
But she meets a man – who she first sees picking elderflowers – and forms a relationship with him. He was bought up in Australia and then Germany by an English mother and German father and works as a contract landscape architect. Whereas she is looking for (but failing to find) solidity and put down roots – he enjoys fluidity and non-conventionality. The two move into a houseboat together, she travels to China for her documentary, they go together to Australia and then Germany (where they live for a period), they have a daughter together.
Their relationship and the tensions/differences in it (as well as the three languages they share) form the basis of the book, which, like Barthes book, explores love in its widest sense but also language, art, landscape, belonging, nostalgia, identity and perhaps most of all the concept of home.
Like Barthes book – the book is structured around a series of short chapters, each starts with a fragment of their conversation and then explores the conversation and events around that fragment.
I was reminded a little of some of the early writing of Alain de Botton, partly of Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” (although this is a much gentler book – note this book’s lack of a longlisting was my Booker failure referred to earlier).
Overall I found this a delightful read – a great way to re-examine a Western classic, full of energy and heart.
My thanks to Random House UK for an ARC via NetGalley.
The idea was that slavery was at the heart of a capitalistic system where reproduction was the main engine. All the things I wrote about originality were kind of beside the point. Originality is a fetish of people who want to control the art market and the publishing industry. It’s also a fetish of academics, particularly the males and old farts. What I was really interested in – though right then even this was blurring in my mind – were the sweating workers in Chinese villages. It was their lives, their anonymity, their way of looking at Western classics, and their purely pragmatic attitude. I loved being with those artisans and feeling their energy and their lack of self-consciousness. They were not precious in any way about their work, or about their life. But they were full of heart, and at the same time they were not clinging to their achievements. They were part of the flow of life. I had come from the same culture, and I felt I could not make this clear or make Westerners understand. The Western language and mentality did not allow me to do it.
This book is the first I have read by the author – an award winning filmmaker, non-fiction writer and fiction writer and who was a judge for the 2019 Booker prize.
I know from having researched her background when having tried (and failed) to predict what influence it may have on that longlist that her best known fictional book is probably “A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers” – and in many ways this book feels like a variation on the basic tenets of that book (Chinese woman immigrates to London, learns English, reflects on the differences between English and Chinese, forms a relationship with someone from a very different cultural background) but one that loses the broken English and dictionary conceit and is instead very explicitly based around (and even has the characters discuss) Roland Barthes “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments” – a book which the author stated in a 2018 Guardian Q&A as the book she most wishes she had written.
The narrator is an unnamed woman – bought up in the Chinese countryside (and I think of peasant background) who after an MA in Sociology and Film Making in Beijing, moves to London in late 2015 (against the background of the Brexit referendum) to do a PhD in Visual Anthopology – he PhD project based around a village in Guangdong Province which collectively specialises in copyings of famous Western paintings.
She struggles with London pub-culture (“What were we supposed to do at night in our rented rooms, if we didn’t drink or watch sports”), English language differences (she takes a doctor’s enquiry into her a family history as asking if she is of peasant/city dweller stock and if her family are Party members “I didn’t expect I would have to carry all this old baggage to England”) and sometimes both (“Liverpool versus Arsenal? I had thought arsenal was a weapons factory, I didn’t know it was a football place too”).
But she meets a man – who she first sees picking elderflowers – and forms a relationship with him. He was bought up in Australia and then Germany by an English mother and German father and works as a contract landscape architect. Whereas she is looking for (but failing to find) solidity and put down roots – he enjoys fluidity and non-conventionality. The two move into a houseboat together, she travels to China for her documentary, they go together to Australia and then Germany (where they live for a period), they have a daughter together.
Their relationship and the tensions/differences in it (as well as the three languages they share) form the basis of the book, which, like Barthes book, explores love in its widest sense but also language, art, landscape, belonging, nostalgia, identity and perhaps most of all the concept of home.
Like Barthes book – the book is structured around a series of short chapters, each starts with a fragment of their conversation and then explores the conversation and events around that fragment.
I was reminded a little of some of the early writing of Alain de Botton, partly of Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” (although this is a much gentler book – note this book’s lack of a longlisting was my Booker failure referred to earlier).
Overall I found this a delightful read – a great way to re-examine a Western classic, full of energy and heart.
My thanks to Random House UK for an ARC via NetGalley.
August 28, 2021
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On paper A Lover's Discourse is the type of book that I generally like: we have an unmanned who recounts her relationship to her unmanned 'lover'—a man she addresses as 'you'. Our narrator met 'you' after moving from China to Britain in 2016. Recently orphaned and feeling somewhat alienated by her new environment the protagonist of A Lover's Discourse enters into a relationship with a German-Australian man. They begin living together in a houseboat, but while 'you' finds freedom in this kind of 'unmoored' lifestyle, our narrator would much rather live in an actual house or apartment. While 'you' earns money as a landscaper, our protagonist works on her PhD.
The structure of this novel is what initially caught my attention. The narrative is comprised of a series of dialogues in which the protagonist and her partner discuss an array of subjects: British-related issues, love, sex, nationality, identity, landscaping, architecture...sadly their conversations aren't particularly deep or compelling. Maybe I write this because I found both characters to be different shades of obnoxious: our mc isn't particularly passionate or interested in anything. While I should have found her efforts to understand British customs and culture, as well as trying to master the English language, to be relatable, given that I am in a similar position, I disliked profoundly the way she was portrayed. She was acerbic nag. She makes generalisation after generalisation about other countries, her own country, and about men. Not only does she repeatedly use the word 'peasants' to refer to the residents of her hometown, but her tone, when using this word, left a lot to be desired. She comes out with obsolete comments that make me question why she would ever want to be in a relationship, especially with man, given that she considers sex to be a violent and invasive act that she doesn't enjoy. Her navel-gazing was far from thought-provoking. She laments her boyfriend having to work, seeming to forget that he is their sole provider as she's busy completing this PhD she doesn't even particularly care for (she kind of forgets about her studies once she starts her relationship with 'you'). Her PhD actually sounded quite interesting, and I wish that it had played more of a role in the narrative.
'You' is a condescending man who is kind of dull. He 'explains' things to our narrator, and he does so in an exceedingly donnish way.
Attempts are made to connect their 'discourse' to Roland Barthes's A Lover's Discourse and I wonder...why? These two characters didn't strike me as the types who would care about Barthes's writings.
Bland, uninspired, and repetitive, A Lover's Discourse was a deeply disappointing read. Thankfully it was a relatively slim book.
On paper A Lover's Discourse is the type of book that I generally like: we have an unmanned who recounts her relationship to her unmanned 'lover'—a man she addresses as 'you'. Our narrator met 'you' after moving from China to Britain in 2016. Recently orphaned and feeling somewhat alienated by her new environment the protagonist of A Lover's Discourse enters into a relationship with a German-Australian man. They begin living together in a houseboat, but while 'you' finds freedom in this kind of 'unmoored' lifestyle, our narrator would much rather live in an actual house or apartment. While 'you' earns money as a landscaper, our protagonist works on her PhD.
The structure of this novel is what initially caught my attention. The narrative is comprised of a series of dialogues in which the protagonist and her partner discuss an array of subjects: British-related issues, love, sex, nationality, identity, landscaping, architecture...sadly their conversations aren't particularly deep or compelling. Maybe I write this because I found both characters to be different shades of obnoxious: our mc isn't particularly passionate or interested in anything. While I should have found her efforts to understand British customs and culture, as well as trying to master the English language, to be relatable, given that I am in a similar position, I disliked profoundly the way she was portrayed. She was acerbic nag. She makes generalisation after generalisation about other countries, her own country, and about men. Not only does she repeatedly use the word 'peasants' to refer to the residents of her hometown, but her tone, when using this word, left a lot to be desired. She comes out with obsolete comments that make me question why she would ever want to be in a relationship, especially with man, given that she considers sex to be a violent and invasive act that she doesn't enjoy. Her navel-gazing was far from thought-provoking. She laments her boyfriend having to work, seeming to forget that he is their sole provider as she's busy completing this PhD she doesn't even particularly care for (she kind of forgets about her studies once she starts her relationship with 'you'). Her PhD actually sounded quite interesting, and I wish that it had played more of a role in the narrative.
'You' is a condescending man who is kind of dull. He 'explains' things to our narrator, and he does so in an exceedingly donnish way.
Attempts are made to connect their 'discourse' to Roland Barthes's A Lover's Discourse and I wonder...why? These two characters didn't strike me as the types who would care about Barthes's writings.
Bland, uninspired, and repetitive, A Lover's Discourse was a deeply disappointing read. Thankfully it was a relatively slim book.
September 28, 2020
A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo is a very unique novel.
A Lover’s Discourse is about a Chinese woman and her relationship with a German man in Brexit Britain. It is an interesting book from a woman’s perspective. The book is composed of little stories of the couple.
I found the book very interesting and like reading unique stories. A Lover’s Discourse is a romance about a couple that doesn’t believe in love. The reader gets to hear what the woman is thinking. Both characters feel like they don’t belong in Britain but have different opinions about staying. I recommend A Lover’s Discourse for anyone that likes unique stories. This is not your typical romance.
I listened to the audiobook and enjoyed Cindy Kay’s narration.
Thank you NetGalley and HighBridge Audio/RB Media for A Lover’s Discourse.
A Lover’s Discourse is about a Chinese woman and her relationship with a German man in Brexit Britain. It is an interesting book from a woman’s perspective. The book is composed of little stories of the couple.
I found the book very interesting and like reading unique stories. A Lover’s Discourse is a romance about a couple that doesn’t believe in love. The reader gets to hear what the woman is thinking. Both characters feel like they don’t belong in Britain but have different opinions about staying. I recommend A Lover’s Discourse for anyone that likes unique stories. This is not your typical romance.
I listened to the audiobook and enjoyed Cindy Kay’s narration.
Thank you NetGalley and HighBridge Audio/RB Media for A Lover’s Discourse.
September 13, 2020
"There is no place like home"."Home is where the heart is". A warm cozy feeling...but what if you are rootless, an immigrant to a new country, unfamiliar with the language, culture and ideology?
He picked elderflowers by the park. "Wasn't it clear the moment you picked the elderflowers...and we looked at each other...[doesn't] love always start from first sight?...It's only when we have a second thought about our first sighted love, that we might change our mind". He was a landscape architect of British-German descent having moved from Australia. She was a Chinese doctoral candidate from Beijing studying visual anthropology.
In vignettes, snippets of conversation, two unnamed rootless immigrants discuss their views on subjects such as the Brexit referendum, immigration, art, love , language and the comfort of home. She, enjoys the vibrant city life, he, life aboard a houseboat. The reader is privy to their exchanges demonstrating different ideologies and cultures.
"Why do you think home is lifeless?"
"I don't think home is lifeless. this boat's our home. But I think an enclosed space with a conventional setup is lifeless"
"Aren't you worried about having to change mooring at the time?"
"No really you are my mooring".
"We could play in a band together. I feel there are musical vibrations between us".
"Vibrations?'
"Love".
He feels power is beautiful, certainly, this is a bone of contention.
"Obviously power is beautiful. Women in particular know that...".
"It's men's illusion to think power is beautiful".
"A Lover's Discourse" by Xiaolu Guo is written in English with an overlay of German and Mandarin expressions used when the lovers find their native language can more accurately express a viewpoint. The lovers often must agree to disagree as they navigate their ever changing life journey!
Thank you Grove Atlantic and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
He picked elderflowers by the park. "Wasn't it clear the moment you picked the elderflowers...and we looked at each other...[doesn't] love always start from first sight?...It's only when we have a second thought about our first sighted love, that we might change our mind". He was a landscape architect of British-German descent having moved from Australia. She was a Chinese doctoral candidate from Beijing studying visual anthropology.
In vignettes, snippets of conversation, two unnamed rootless immigrants discuss their views on subjects such as the Brexit referendum, immigration, art, love , language and the comfort of home. She, enjoys the vibrant city life, he, life aboard a houseboat. The reader is privy to their exchanges demonstrating different ideologies and cultures.
"Why do you think home is lifeless?"
"I don't think home is lifeless. this boat's our home. But I think an enclosed space with a conventional setup is lifeless"
"Aren't you worried about having to change mooring at the time?"
"No really you are my mooring".
"We could play in a band together. I feel there are musical vibrations between us".
"Vibrations?'
"Love".
He feels power is beautiful, certainly, this is a bone of contention.
"Obviously power is beautiful. Women in particular know that...".
"It's men's illusion to think power is beautiful".
"A Lover's Discourse" by Xiaolu Guo is written in English with an overlay of German and Mandarin expressions used when the lovers find their native language can more accurately express a viewpoint. The lovers often must agree to disagree as they navigate their ever changing life journey!
Thank you Grove Atlantic and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
November 5, 2020
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020
Another book from the Goldsmiths list which I liked, but struggled a little to see as innovative, though perhaps a greater knowledge of Roland Barthes might have helped, as Barthes book of the same name is mentioned several times.
This book tells the story of a relationship between a Chinese postgraduate student, who arrived in London at the time of the Brexit referendum in 2016 (Guo herself has been in Britain for longer, so this is clearly not her story), and a landscape architect who is half Australian and half German. Each short chapter begins with a fragment of conversation, which appears in context later in the chapter. Much of the book is about language and how it affects perceptions, and I found this rather interesting.
Another book from the Goldsmiths list which I liked, but struggled a little to see as innovative, though perhaps a greater knowledge of Roland Barthes might have helped, as Barthes book of the same name is mentioned several times.
This book tells the story of a relationship between a Chinese postgraduate student, who arrived in London at the time of the Brexit referendum in 2016 (Guo herself has been in Britain for longer, so this is clearly not her story), and a landscape architect who is half Australian and half German. Each short chapter begins with a fragment of conversation, which appears in context later in the chapter. Much of the book is about language and how it affects perceptions, and I found this rather interesting.
August 17, 2020
This is a story told in a series of short episodes or vignettes. A unnamed Chinese narrator moves to London for her PhD and forms a relationship with an unnamed German-English man she meets. The episodes we read form a sort of daisy-chain of conversations (the clue is in the book’s title) at various points in their relationship. There is no real story being told apart from the development of the relationship.
I understand, I think, the reason for this structure. The book begin with an epigraph taken from Barthes’ book “Fragments d’un discours amoureux”, which in English becomes “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments”, and both books share, deliberately on Guo’s part (I assume) a fragmentary structure.
It’s an enjoyable read, but it did feel to me more like a construction than a story. The book begins just prior to the UK’s Brexit referendum and continues through the next few years. Brexit crops up several times (but things have moved on quite a bit since the time at which the book is set) and this allows conversations about belonging and about distances between people. And then the two protagonists have long conversations about art and architecture (due to her PhD topic and his job). These lead, in turn, to several passages about reproduction or copying of art (this became the dominant theme in my head as I look back on the book although I am not sure it actually is in terms of content). Then there’s talk about the limits of language, facilitated by a Chinese person living with a German-English person in, initially, London. There’s the search for a place to call home.
In between all these conversations, a sort of story emerges as the couple moves around and learns to live together.
I’m really not sure how I feel about the book overall. The developing relationship is sensitively explored but the fragmentary nature of the book means it never builds a real sense of flow. The conversations are often interesting to read but also have a tendency to feel a bit contrived in order to cover another topic on a list somewhere.
Overall, an enjoyable book to read but one that felt a bit over-constructed for me to get very excited about it. Or perhaps what I really mean is a book that makes its careful construction a bit too obvious.
I understand, I think, the reason for this structure. The book begin with an epigraph taken from Barthes’ book “Fragments d’un discours amoureux”, which in English becomes “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments”, and both books share, deliberately on Guo’s part (I assume) a fragmentary structure.
It’s an enjoyable read, but it did feel to me more like a construction than a story. The book begins just prior to the UK’s Brexit referendum and continues through the next few years. Brexit crops up several times (but things have moved on quite a bit since the time at which the book is set) and this allows conversations about belonging and about distances between people. And then the two protagonists have long conversations about art and architecture (due to her PhD topic and his job). These lead, in turn, to several passages about reproduction or copying of art (this became the dominant theme in my head as I look back on the book although I am not sure it actually is in terms of content). Then there’s talk about the limits of language, facilitated by a Chinese person living with a German-English person in, initially, London. There’s the search for a place to call home.
In between all these conversations, a sort of story emerges as the couple moves around and learns to live together.
I’m really not sure how I feel about the book overall. The developing relationship is sensitively explored but the fragmentary nature of the book means it never builds a real sense of flow. The conversations are often interesting to read but also have a tendency to feel a bit contrived in order to cover another topic on a list somewhere.
Overall, an enjoyable book to read but one that felt a bit over-constructed for me to get very excited about it. Or perhaps what I really mean is a book that makes its careful construction a bit too obvious.
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April 1, 2024
This book was... ok. It split itself off in too many directions and themes, from the notion of home, living, to cultural (and language) differences, to gender dynamics in heteronormative land, to discussions of anthropology and art - original work and copies -, being unmoored, being uprooted, architecture vs landscape, etc. All of these things can work together and they are loosely connected in a web of meaning, but I never felt that they added up to something more, something insightful.
We follow her, the first person narrator, a Chinese woman who is doing her PhD in London after the death of her parents. Honestly, the most interesting part was her PhD thesis about Chinese laborers doing amazing reproductions of the great western canon of paintings. But there was not enough of that. Instead, lover's discourse and all, every little chapter (well, the chapters are big but are composed of little moments or vignettes, Idk, I listened to it on audio so I don't know how it looked in a physical copy) starts with a snippet of conversation, mostly between her and her German-Australian lover, and then proceeds to show you the context and the conversation the snippet is taken from.
The dynamic between her and him is a bit obnoxious, there are various cultural conversations happening, but they feel superficial, and he has a tendency to be condescending and all intellectual. Even if she is all intellectual as well, but more of a romantic.
I did not connect emotionally to the material. And that's surprising because there were a lot of elements that I should have responded to, for sure. The two live for a while on a narrowboat on the London canals, and the bit that is actually mentioned is the one where I spent my first night on a narrowboat (like, ridiculously close, I checked Google Earth), and I drove that freaking boat in Regent's Park and all of the challenges of boat living (as the delights) were quite familiar to me: toilet stuff, water reservoir stuff, gas for cooking stuff, etc.
But our main character never seemed quite happy there, so the book didn't evoke for me that sense of wonder of staying for a while in a liminal space like the water, wind in your hair when you drive the boat, the weird culture around narrowboating (I guess that's why I am writing about all that - which is the reason I picked this up in the first place). Also, at some point, they visit Berlin, which is where I live! And at no point did I feel that much about the material. It felt detached to me.
Would I try something else by Xiaolu Guo? Maybe, I might! 2.5 stars.
We follow her, the first person narrator, a Chinese woman who is doing her PhD in London after the death of her parents. Honestly, the most interesting part was her PhD thesis about Chinese laborers doing amazing reproductions of the great western canon of paintings. But there was not enough of that. Instead, lover's discourse and all, every little chapter (well, the chapters are big but are composed of little moments or vignettes, Idk, I listened to it on audio so I don't know how it looked in a physical copy) starts with a snippet of conversation, mostly between her and her German-Australian lover, and then proceeds to show you the context and the conversation the snippet is taken from.
The dynamic between her and him is a bit obnoxious, there are various cultural conversations happening, but they feel superficial, and he has a tendency to be condescending and all intellectual. Even if she is all intellectual as well, but more of a romantic.
I did not connect emotionally to the material. And that's surprising because there were a lot of elements that I should have responded to, for sure. The two live for a while on a narrowboat on the London canals, and the bit that is actually mentioned is the one where I spent my first night on a narrowboat (like, ridiculously close, I checked Google Earth), and I drove that freaking boat in Regent's Park and all of the challenges of boat living (as the delights) were quite familiar to me: toilet stuff, water reservoir stuff, gas for cooking stuff, etc.
But our main character never seemed quite happy there, so the book didn't evoke for me that sense of wonder of staying for a while in a liminal space like the water, wind in your hair when you drive the boat, the weird culture around narrowboating (I guess that's why I am writing about all that - which is the reason I picked this up in the first place). Also, at some point, they visit Berlin, which is where I live! And at no point did I feel that much about the material. It felt detached to me.
Would I try something else by Xiaolu Guo? Maybe, I might! 2.5 stars.
November 13, 2020
I enjoyed A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo—-told in fragments about love, belonging and clashing ideals of East and the West. A quiet novel, set in present times in UK. Through houseboats, stifling flatshares, a man and a woman try to understand their relationship and society. I was furious with the man that the unnamed narrator meets, dates and falls in love. Herein lies Guo’s strength. I wanted to shake the woman and ask her to leave him. He remains a disagreeable presence in her turbulent life of being uprooted from the Chinese countryside, trying to understand Brexit and work on her PhD. He says careless things, he thinks he is always right. The fragments often get philosophical and sometimes become a commentary on art. A tricky book, you’ll enjoy it only if you love novels told in vignettes and you aren’t adamant on a firm plot.
Much thanks to Vintage for a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.
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Much thanks to Vintage for a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.
Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest
July 9, 2020
I just love her books. They are hard to describe, a combination of scenes and witty observations. A relationship unfolds between a Chinese PHD student and a German-English man in Brexit Britain. Guo’s observations, thoughts and things she finds funny just chime so much with me. And I have that with all her books. She is just witty and smart. And I love that.
October 11, 2020
2.5 rounded up
This read like an updated version of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers - a quick and easy read about romantic love framed in the context of A Lover's Discourse: Fragments.
My view was that the thoughts shared by the protagonist, a Chinese woman who moves to London to study for a PhD just on the cusp of the Brexit vote, were not quite as deep or profound as Guo perhaps considered them to be. Our unnamed main character strikes up a relationship with a man who is half British and half German, and the novel follows them as their relationship develops. Their "discourse" started off well but the focus in later parts of the book felt like more of a lack of communication to me, with our female protagonist having less and less agency towards the end. I enjoyed the references to Chinese language, appreciated Guo's writing and found the book quite readable, but it was lacking a certain something for this reader.
Thank you Netgalley and Random House UK / Vintage Publishing for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
This read like an updated version of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers - a quick and easy read about romantic love framed in the context of A Lover's Discourse: Fragments.
My view was that the thoughts shared by the protagonist, a Chinese woman who moves to London to study for a PhD just on the cusp of the Brexit vote, were not quite as deep or profound as Guo perhaps considered them to be. Our unnamed main character strikes up a relationship with a man who is half British and half German, and the novel follows them as their relationship develops. Their "discourse" started off well but the focus in later parts of the book felt like more of a lack of communication to me, with our female protagonist having less and less agency towards the end. I enjoyed the references to Chinese language, appreciated Guo's writing and found the book quite readable, but it was lacking a certain something for this reader.
Thank you Netgalley and Random House UK / Vintage Publishing for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
February 13, 2024
Słuchałam jej od początku miesiąca, co zazwyczaj w moim przypadku działa na niekorzyść książki,
ale tutaj było wręcz przeciwnie.
Specjalnie wydłużałam czas spędzony z tą lekturą,
starając się jak najwiecej z niej wyciągnąć.
Jestem zachwycona tym, jak przyziemna jest ta powieść
na poziomie fabularnym i jak wiele jednocześnie
dzieje się tu w sferze językowej.
Nie jest napisana w jakiś szczególnie wymyślny sposób, może poza tym, że adresatem słów narratorki jest jej ukochany, co sprawia,
że powieść przypomina długi list, a to z kolei
dodaje jej kolejną płaszczyznę komunikacyjną.
To co mnie szczególnie urzekło w tej książce to refleksje na temat tego, jak jezyk wpływa na naszą percepcję świata.
W tle mamy także wątek akademicko-artystyczny.
BARDZO moja książka.
ale tutaj było wręcz przeciwnie.
Specjalnie wydłużałam czas spędzony z tą lekturą,
starając się jak najwiecej z niej wyciągnąć.
Jestem zachwycona tym, jak przyziemna jest ta powieść
na poziomie fabularnym i jak wiele jednocześnie
dzieje się tu w sferze językowej.
Nie jest napisana w jakiś szczególnie wymyślny sposób, może poza tym, że adresatem słów narratorki jest jej ukochany, co sprawia,
że powieść przypomina długi list, a to z kolei
dodaje jej kolejną płaszczyznę komunikacyjną.
To co mnie szczególnie urzekło w tej książce to refleksje na temat tego, jak jezyk wpływa na naszą percepcję świata.
W tle mamy także wątek akademicko-artystyczny.
BARDZO moja książka.
October 21, 2020
"To try to write love is to confront the muck of language; that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive (by the limitless expansion of the ego, by emotive submersion) and impoverished (by the codes on which love diminishes and levels it)."
from A Lover's Discourse: Fragments, translated by Richard Howard from Barthes' Fragments d’un discours amoureux.
Shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize, A Lover's Discourse by Xiaolu Guo is explicitly inspired in its form by Barthes' book, and is also, as the author has discussed in interviews, a reworking of her own debut novel. The judges' citation reads:
The novel is narrated in the first person by a Chinese woman who moved to London in December 2015, after completing an MA in Sociology and Film Making, to do a PhD at Kings College London.
The author refers to her style as documentary novels, and the story is told in brief fragmentary chapters, each beginning with a quote from the following text, mimicking Barthes' work, and the chapters themselves into eight sections, named with the Chinese characters for the cardinal points (West, South, East, North) and directions (Down, Up, Left, Right), these sections roughly corresponding to the characters' journeys (e.g. a trip to Scotland to visit her lover's architectural project is under North, and a trip downunder to visit his Australian relatives is covered in Down).
In her early months in London the narrator meets a landscape architect, of British-German origins but brought-up in Australia. The Lover's Discourse is at face value the story of their romantic relationship, but that makes for a rather slight (if often quite amusing - they seem a very ill-matched peer) story. Guo's concerns are more around:
- language, and its relation to culture, which presents a divide between the lovers, and to the narrator integrating into her new country, starting with her incomprehension of the word Brexit (she can't find it in her Chinese-English dictionary) and even the concept of a referendum;
I felt like a fish swimming in a new part of the ocean, unable to recognise the seaweed
- the concept of a 'home' including that between someone (the narrator) from a rural background and Western modernist architecture from the Le Corbusier school;
- the literary canon, and the way in which the West tends to rather ignore that of the East, while expecting others are familiar with our canon. From an interview in Prospect (http://www.guoxiaolu.com/REV_WR_ALD_2...)
- and Brexit, which forms a backdrop to the story, the referendum called a couple of months after her arrival. An element of the novel that felt unnecessarily tacked-on and rather shallow: there is a clear link to be made to the book's theme of a sense of home/belonging, and how that manifested very differently for people on both sides of the debate, but the book doesn't make it and instead seems at the Brexit=disaster level of debate.
It certainly makes for an entertaining read, but at times it felt a little insubstantial. For example, the language/culture issue is illustrated by set pieces which often play the topic for laughs such as:
“Look, basically I’m an Anglo-Saxon, a Wasp.”
“Wasp?” Now it was my turn to laugh. “A fly with yellow-and-black stripes, going around stinging people?”
“I don’t sting people, but I do wear striped shirts.” You choked a little on your hot green tea, then explained: “A Wasp is a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. You might have heard of it?”
“Hmm, a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.” All these words sounded alien to me, apart from white.
Or this on her frustration with the three genders of German, their lack of logic and the whole der/das/die business, given the lack of articles in Chinese:
'You don't have any articles?'
'No. Why bother? We save time for something else.'
'Something else like what?'
'Like enjoying the taste of green tea, or staring into a pond, checking out frogs and lotus flowers.'
Perhaps the novel's most interesting episode, and the basis for the narrator's PhD, is a visit to a village in China (actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafen_V...) where local artists produce reproductions of artworks. This was also the subject of the author's own 2018 film Five Men and a Caravaggio. An episode where a local artist mocks up a Da Vinci, but using Chinese inks and brushes, and then decides not to add the halos from the originals as it makes the picture look tacky, rather neatly sums up the novel's themes.
But structurally I felt the novel lent a little too heavily on Barthes' work and it is perhaps telling that one of my favourite passages in the novel was a direct quote from Barthes, from Empire of Signs, also translated by Richard Howard. The full quote (Guo only quotes to "...protection" and from "Here..."), based on the author's experience in Japan reads:
The murmuring mass of an unknown language constitutes a delicious protection, envelops the foreigner (provided the country is not hostile to him) in an auditory film which halts at his ears all the alienations of the mother tongue: the regional and social origins of whoever is speaking, his degree of culture, of intelligence, of taste, the image by which he constitutes himself as a person and which he asks you to recognize. Hence, in foreign countries, what a respite! Here I am protected against stupidity, vulgarity, vanity, worldliness, nationality', normality.
although Guo's narrator, in Italy where her European boyfriend can grasp the basics of the language but it is completely foreign to her, explains why she doesn't feel this protection.
Overall 3.5 stars - not an unreasonable inclusion on the Goldsmiths list but with 4 other strong novels, not one I see as a winner. As an enjoyable explanation of language, I could round this up to 4, but judging as a Goldsmiths contender, 3.
from A Lover's Discourse: Fragments, translated by Richard Howard from Barthes' Fragments d’un discours amoureux.
Shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize, A Lover's Discourse by Xiaolu Guo is explicitly inspired in its form by Barthes' book, and is also, as the author has discussed in interviews, a reworking of her own debut novel. The judges' citation reads:
If A Lover’s Discourse by Roland Barthes is a novelistic essay, Xiaolu Guo’s book of the same name is an essayistic novel. In short chapters, and with hypnotically measured language, Guo studies the relationship between two lovers as a union and an alliance, yes, but also as a confrontation, an argument, and a struggle.
The book charts the evolution of a love affair between a nameless film student, who has moved to London from China, and a half-German, half-Australian landscape architect. Brexit looms large, as does isolation, as Guo describes the emotional and psychological landscape navigated by immigrants to Britain. Most impressive of all is the close attention she pays to a country’s language – not just the literal meaning of words, but also the moods they impart. Doing so, she makes the texture of daily life appear strange and new.
The novel is narrated in the first person by a Chinese woman who moved to London in December 2015, after completing an MA in Sociology and Film Making, to do a PhD at Kings College London.
The author refers to her style as documentary novels, and the story is told in brief fragmentary chapters, each beginning with a quote from the following text, mimicking Barthes' work, and the chapters themselves into eight sections, named with the Chinese characters for the cardinal points (West, South, East, North) and directions (Down, Up, Left, Right), these sections roughly corresponding to the characters' journeys (e.g. a trip to Scotland to visit her lover's architectural project is under North, and a trip downunder to visit his Australian relatives is covered in Down).
In her early months in London the narrator meets a landscape architect, of British-German origins but brought-up in Australia. The Lover's Discourse is at face value the story of their romantic relationship, but that makes for a rather slight (if often quite amusing - they seem a very ill-matched peer) story. Guo's concerns are more around:
- language, and its relation to culture, which presents a divide between the lovers, and to the narrator integrating into her new country, starting with her incomprehension of the word Brexit (she can't find it in her Chinese-English dictionary) and even the concept of a referendum;
I felt like a fish swimming in a new part of the ocean, unable to recognise the seaweed
- the concept of a 'home' including that between someone (the narrator) from a rural background and Western modernist architecture from the Le Corbusier school;
- the literary canon, and the way in which the West tends to rather ignore that of the East, while expecting others are familiar with our canon. From an interview in Prospect (http://www.guoxiaolu.com/REV_WR_ALD_2...)
I see a huge problem with what’s on the university list,” she continues, pointing to the disproportionate presence of European thinkers “even in China.” She observes how east Asian students in the west can face a lot of “unjust prejudice” for having not read Thomas Hardy or Virginia Woolf at their universities: “but have you read Wang Wei; have you read Li Bai, have you read Lu Xun?” she says, listing China’s great historical poets.
- and Brexit, which forms a backdrop to the story, the referendum called a couple of months after her arrival. An element of the novel that felt unnecessarily tacked-on and rather shallow: there is a clear link to be made to the book's theme of a sense of home/belonging, and how that manifested very differently for people on both sides of the debate, but the book doesn't make it and instead seems at the Brexit=disaster level of debate.
It certainly makes for an entertaining read, but at times it felt a little insubstantial. For example, the language/culture issue is illustrated by set pieces which often play the topic for laughs such as:
“Look, basically I’m an Anglo-Saxon, a Wasp.”
“Wasp?” Now it was my turn to laugh. “A fly with yellow-and-black stripes, going around stinging people?”
“I don’t sting people, but I do wear striped shirts.” You choked a little on your hot green tea, then explained: “A Wasp is a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. You might have heard of it?”
“Hmm, a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.” All these words sounded alien to me, apart from white.
Or this on her frustration with the three genders of German, their lack of logic and the whole der/das/die business, given the lack of articles in Chinese:
'You don't have any articles?'
'No. Why bother? We save time for something else.'
'Something else like what?'
'Like enjoying the taste of green tea, or staring into a pond, checking out frogs and lotus flowers.'
Perhaps the novel's most interesting episode, and the basis for the narrator's PhD, is a visit to a village in China (actually https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafen_V...) where local artists produce reproductions of artworks. This was also the subject of the author's own 2018 film Five Men and a Caravaggio. An episode where a local artist mocks up a Da Vinci, but using Chinese inks and brushes, and then decides not to add the halos from the originals as it makes the picture look tacky, rather neatly sums up the novel's themes.
But structurally I felt the novel lent a little too heavily on Barthes' work and it is perhaps telling that one of my favourite passages in the novel was a direct quote from Barthes, from Empire of Signs, also translated by Richard Howard. The full quote (Guo only quotes to "...protection" and from "Here..."), based on the author's experience in Japan reads:
The murmuring mass of an unknown language constitutes a delicious protection, envelops the foreigner (provided the country is not hostile to him) in an auditory film which halts at his ears all the alienations of the mother tongue: the regional and social origins of whoever is speaking, his degree of culture, of intelligence, of taste, the image by which he constitutes himself as a person and which he asks you to recognize. Hence, in foreign countries, what a respite! Here I am protected against stupidity, vulgarity, vanity, worldliness, nationality', normality.
although Guo's narrator, in Italy where her European boyfriend can grasp the basics of the language but it is completely foreign to her, explains why she doesn't feel this protection.
Overall 3.5 stars - not an unreasonable inclusion on the Goldsmiths list but with 4 other strong novels, not one I see as a winner. As an enjoyable explanation of language, I could round this up to 4, but judging as a Goldsmiths contender, 3.
January 23, 2022
This was really moving and beautiful. Full review to follow.
Recommended.
🌻🍃 More bookish content on Shut up, Shealea 🍃🌻
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Recommended.
🌻🍃 More bookish content on Shut up, Shealea 🍃🌻
instagram • pinterest • twitter • ko-fi
December 26, 2024
اگه پدر مادرتون تنها کسانی باشن که دارینشون، اگه تنها خانوادهاتون رو از دست بدین
اگه مهاجرت کنین چون دیگه خونه، خونه نیست
اگه خوششانس باشین و معشوقه/همراهای پیدا کنین
اگه همزبان نباشین و این یعنی از دنیاهای متفاوتی هستین
آیا میتونین ارتباط برقرار کنین؟ درک کنین و درک بشین؟
آیا میتونین اون فاصلهای که به خاطر زبانها هست رو کنار بزارین و عشق رو حس کنین؟
آیا میشه وقتی همه چیز رو با انتخاب یا به اجبار پشت سر گذاشتین، دوباره شروع کنین؟
آیا قراره همیشه تو حالت آوارگی روانی و عدم تعلق بمونین؟
آیا میشه وقتی حسهای تعلق داشتن به خونه، جغرافیا، زبان، فرهنگ برای همیشه نابود میشن، دوباره “واقعا” ساخته بشن؟
۴.۵*
اگه مهاجرت کنین چون دیگه خونه، خونه نیست
اگه خوششانس باشین و معشوقه/همراهای پیدا کنین
اگه همزبان نباشین و این یعنی از دنیاهای متفاوتی هستین
آیا میتونین ارتباط برقرار کنین؟ درک کنین و درک بشین؟
آیا میتونین اون فاصلهای که به خاطر زبانها هست رو کنار بزارین و عشق رو حس کنین؟
آیا میشه وقتی همه چیز رو با انتخاب یا به اجبار پشت سر گذاشتین، دوباره شروع کنین؟
آیا قراره همیشه تو حالت آوارگی روانی و عدم تعلق بمونین؟
آیا میشه وقتی حسهای تعلق داشتن به خونه، جغرافیا، زبان، فرهنگ برای همیشه نابود میشن، دوباره “واقعا” ساخته بشن؟
۴.۵*
December 11, 2020
A contemporary fiction of love and relationship, strongly elaborated that it feels like I am 'happily' delve inside their whole love phases from beginning to end, sitting at the table joining their talks and arguments, wandering inside their train of solipsistic monologues and captivating prose.
"I remember you said: ‘I don’t believe in love at first sight.’ I was taken aback. I thought we were definitely in love at first sight."
I find it interesting as it was told in the narrator's pov (she) but the narrative still presented a balance view from both man and woman characters, their differences of thought and randomness, very philosophical and mesmerizing.
I love the fragmented style (that Barthesian Love Discourse parts are my favorite, and when she talks about A Lover's Discourse: Fragments by Barthes it makes me wanna go and get myself a copy of it)-- so crisp and tasteful. From England to China to Australia, Rome and Berlin with atmospheric nuances and storytelling. That pinch of China history, some ethical and traditions, cultures, languages and sosial stuff. On getting to know each other to talk on responsibility and family, and art (I like that part about her thesis documentary on villager in Jing Cun who reproduce Monet, Chagall and da Vinci)!. Her curious side of 'you'. I fancy their conversation, especially the one at the restaurant when she asked about the masculinity of 'moon' in German language.
"Now I can feel life. In German feel is spüren. I prefer spüren, somehow. Spüren sounds much heavier than feel."
The author really did well with the plot development and characterization. The phases are accordingly structured. She is innocent and genuine, always full of curiosity. He is a wonderland, unexpected, full of mystery and dreams.
"Every evening when I got back home, you would be in front of your computer. A half-eaten banana or apple core next to you. You looked melancholy. Your mood was like the lead-coloured winter sky outside, heavy and despondent."
Picturesque architectural talk, wisdoms and art; Klimt, Modiglian (did i just google about his paintings?), Botticelli, da Vinci (I also just realised about the halos!), few books references (Doris Lessing, Thomas Mann, Frank Gehry, Mao and Balzac), of their past and hometown, all those sombre memories, elderflowers and beetroots. A very interesting concept, bubbly and fresh (bit of humor and sometimes too relatable), so 'comfortable'. Love its few last chapters and the ending-- an evocative love story with hues of mood.
"I learned about failure, and that failure was not the end of everything. Failure. Success. Did I see my own life in these terms? In some ways, my life had just begun."
ps: had to google how to pronounce ehefähigkeitszeugnis and geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung, phew!
Thanks to Pansing Distribution for sending me a copy of this book in return of an honest review!
"I remember you said: ‘I don’t believe in love at first sight.’ I was taken aback. I thought we were definitely in love at first sight."
I find it interesting as it was told in the narrator's pov (she) but the narrative still presented a balance view from both man and woman characters, their differences of thought and randomness, very philosophical and mesmerizing.
I love the fragmented style (that Barthesian Love Discourse parts are my favorite, and when she talks about A Lover's Discourse: Fragments by Barthes it makes me wanna go and get myself a copy of it)-- so crisp and tasteful. From England to China to Australia, Rome and Berlin with atmospheric nuances and storytelling. That pinch of China history, some ethical and traditions, cultures, languages and sosial stuff. On getting to know each other to talk on responsibility and family, and art (I like that part about her thesis documentary on villager in Jing Cun who reproduce Monet, Chagall and da Vinci)!. Her curious side of 'you'. I fancy their conversation, especially the one at the restaurant when she asked about the masculinity of 'moon' in German language.
"Now I can feel life. In German feel is spüren. I prefer spüren, somehow. Spüren sounds much heavier than feel."
The author really did well with the plot development and characterization. The phases are accordingly structured. She is innocent and genuine, always full of curiosity. He is a wonderland, unexpected, full of mystery and dreams.
"Every evening when I got back home, you would be in front of your computer. A half-eaten banana or apple core next to you. You looked melancholy. Your mood was like the lead-coloured winter sky outside, heavy and despondent."
Picturesque architectural talk, wisdoms and art; Klimt, Modiglian (did i just google about his paintings?), Botticelli, da Vinci (I also just realised about the halos!), few books references (Doris Lessing, Thomas Mann, Frank Gehry, Mao and Balzac), of their past and hometown, all those sombre memories, elderflowers and beetroots. A very interesting concept, bubbly and fresh (bit of humor and sometimes too relatable), so 'comfortable'. Love its few last chapters and the ending-- an evocative love story with hues of mood.
"I learned about failure, and that failure was not the end of everything. Failure. Success. Did I see my own life in these terms? In some ways, my life had just begun."
ps: had to google how to pronounce ehefähigkeitszeugnis and geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung, phew!
Thanks to Pansing Distribution for sending me a copy of this book in return of an honest review!
June 7, 2021
Six months before the Brexit refrendum, a student from China arrives in London to pursue a doctoral degree in anthropology. She meets a man and builds a life together with him. A Lover's Discorse is a collection of the protagnist's thoughts, addressed to "you", the man. It is the 3 years the couple share together. Readers stay close to what's in the woman's head. We don't have the firsthand knowledge of what the man thinks.
The protagnist's loneliness is well-dipicted. Many immigrants and travellers who have struggled in a new country can relate to what in a chapter where she feels total lost in a party. A lot of times the language barrier is not about the language itself, but the culture and history behind it.
I find some details hard to believe. Chinese students arrived in Britain in 2015 without a dictionary app on their smart phones? A Phd candidate never heard of Brexit until having landed?
The protagnist's loneliness is well-dipicted. Many immigrants and travellers who have struggled in a new country can relate to what in a chapter where she feels total lost in a party. A lot of times the language barrier is not about the language itself, but the culture and history behind it.
I find some details hard to believe. Chinese students arrived in Britain in 2015 without a dictionary app on their smart phones? A Phd candidate never heard of Brexit until having landed?
May 12, 2024
“a story of desire, love and language—and the meaning of home—told through conversations between two lovers.”
say no more, i’m sold.
say no more, i’m sold.
June 17, 2021
I enjoyed this, but not nearly as much as I did Barthes’ original. Guo steals some of the structure – the short chapters with an indented quote at the start of each. She uses a couple of lines from the chapter below, while Barthes heads each chapter with a word and then its definition.
What I do like about this is the outsider’s view of both London and Europe. The recall of memories of growing up in sub-tropical southern China compared to the cold London winter on a badly insulated canal boat.
Our unnamed first-person narrator comes to London to study for a PhD in visual anthropology. It is her first time in the west and she has much to learn. There are some amusing misunderstandings. I particularly liked London Wall. “I knew of the Berlin Wall, but I had never heard of a London Wall. Was it also a Communist wall between East and West London?” I had never really thought how confusing it must be for foreigners to find a road called London Wall. And that comment about East and West London – out of misunderstanding comes great satire.
Eventually our narrator meets someone, falls in love and they move in together. At first this is conventional, but they soon move out of a shared flat and onto a houseboat on Regent’s Canal. The love interest is also an immigrant of sorts, with a German father, an English mother and a childhood in Australia. It is, in fact, quite an international novel. As well as flashbacks and a trip to China, we also go to Australia, Rome and Germany.
I find it interesting that neither narrator or lover are ever named (unless I missed something somewhere). The narrator is always addressing her lover, later husband, as ‘you’ – statements are addressed to him, with this rather impersonal pronoun and never a name.
Our narrator undertakes a complex emotional journey. Obviously from China to London, then from observer of a man to lover of a man, from visitor to his flat to resident, and then to owner of a canal boat. From happiness at togetherness to dismay at the difficulties and cold of canal living. Then along comes motherhood, back to London flat dwelling, then a move to Germany to create a home on a bare plot of land, before finally coming back to London. The question of where to belong is ever present, especially with a child who is British when you are not.
Late in the book the narrator voices some of these frustrations:
It is a journey of always being the outsider, even when back in your homeland. Most symbolic is the narrator’s trip back to China to make a documentary about a town which churns out forged pieces of European art. Here the artists do not understand the symbolism or anything about the art they are copying. The halos are missed of the Virgin and child, so reducing them to ordinary mother and baby.
I think you could take this novel apart piece by piece and reveal so many levels. Its theme of displacement, set against the mounting turmoil of Brexit is a compelling one.
What I do like about this is the outsider’s view of both London and Europe. The recall of memories of growing up in sub-tropical southern China compared to the cold London winter on a badly insulated canal boat.
Our unnamed first-person narrator comes to London to study for a PhD in visual anthropology. It is her first time in the west and she has much to learn. There are some amusing misunderstandings. I particularly liked London Wall. “I knew of the Berlin Wall, but I had never heard of a London Wall. Was it also a Communist wall between East and West London?” I had never really thought how confusing it must be for foreigners to find a road called London Wall. And that comment about East and West London – out of misunderstanding comes great satire.
Eventually our narrator meets someone, falls in love and they move in together. At first this is conventional, but they soon move out of a shared flat and onto a houseboat on Regent’s Canal. The love interest is also an immigrant of sorts, with a German father, an English mother and a childhood in Australia. It is, in fact, quite an international novel. As well as flashbacks and a trip to China, we also go to Australia, Rome and Germany.
I find it interesting that neither narrator or lover are ever named (unless I missed something somewhere). The narrator is always addressing her lover, later husband, as ‘you’ – statements are addressed to him, with this rather impersonal pronoun and never a name.
Our narrator undertakes a complex emotional journey. Obviously from China to London, then from observer of a man to lover of a man, from visitor to his flat to resident, and then to owner of a canal boat. From happiness at togetherness to dismay at the difficulties and cold of canal living. Then along comes motherhood, back to London flat dwelling, then a move to Germany to create a home on a bare plot of land, before finally coming back to London. The question of where to belong is ever present, especially with a child who is British when you are not.
Late in the book the narrator voices some of these frustrations:
But I was afraid I would never learn to speak German. Sometimes I thought I should take the baby back to China. I could find a job there. But the thought of returning to China made me feel disempowered and physically ill. I had been uprooted. I wouldn’t be able to survive if I tried to transport myself back again.
It is a journey of always being the outsider, even when back in your homeland. Most symbolic is the narrator’s trip back to China to make a documentary about a town which churns out forged pieces of European art. Here the artists do not understand the symbolism or anything about the art they are copying. The halos are missed of the Virgin and child, so reducing them to ordinary mother and baby.
I think you could take this novel apart piece by piece and reveal so many levels. Its theme of displacement, set against the mounting turmoil of Brexit is a compelling one.
September 29, 2020
3.5⭐️
Audiobook version for me on this. I loved the narrator and her voice was easy and comforting.
The description of the book didn’t match the book. But that was fine for me. I can’t imagine being in another country and trying to fit in.
The book was mostly about a Chinese women and her need to further understand, well, everything. She was trying to desperately hold onto the preconceived ideals of places and concepts. Her perspective and mindset powerfully influenced her.
The book is about a relationship but I wouldn’t call them lovers. The book is mostly about how culturally challenging her life was living away from China.
Thank you NETGALLEY and the publisher for this audiobook ARC, in exchange for my honest review. ♥️
Audiobook version for me on this. I loved the narrator and her voice was easy and comforting.
The description of the book didn’t match the book. But that was fine for me. I can’t imagine being in another country and trying to fit in.
The book was mostly about a Chinese women and her need to further understand, well, everything. She was trying to desperately hold onto the preconceived ideals of places and concepts. Her perspective and mindset powerfully influenced her.
The book is about a relationship but I wouldn’t call them lovers. The book is mostly about how culturally challenging her life was living away from China.
Thank you NETGALLEY and the publisher for this audiobook ARC, in exchange for my honest review. ♥️
September 28, 2020
Disclaimer: I receive a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
"I wanted to be a woman in the world, or really, a woman of the world - I wanted to equip myself with an intellectual mind so that I could enter a foreign land and not be lost in it."
A lovers Discourse is a fast pace easy book to read.
It's form the female first person POV. It feels like a diary of her story between her and her lover.
The book has no main ending. There is no definite ending that the plotline was going.
I enjoyed the short chapters and how lyrical the writing was.
The story follows our female lead who is trying to find a place where she feels home and at the same time understanding love.
It's the simple question she asked sometimes about sex, love and marriage really got me thinking deeply of the topic that makes me understand the main character thoughts and feelings.
I was annoyed with the male lead character and I feel like everybody is screaming at the female lead to leave him.
Then I step back and realise the characters of the book is so real that sometimes people in real life are similar to them and decide to fix rather than leaving.
Hence their actions feels very real and understandable even though if the outcome is not to everyone's agreement.
I enjoyed the book however I felt like some things doesn't make sense in the story. It feels like fillers.
"The outside world disappeared. There was only you and me. Our bodies parted for some hours during the day, but we found ourselves n each other's arms again in the evening. How I loved the way you enveloped me, one arm around my neck and shoulders, and the other holding my hip. Our legs entwined. My long hair covered my face whenever you kissed me, as if it were a veil to keep you from seeing and feeling me clearly."
"I wanted to be a woman in the world, or really, a woman of the world - I wanted to equip myself with an intellectual mind so that I could enter a foreign land and not be lost in it."
A lovers Discourse is a fast pace easy book to read.
It's form the female first person POV. It feels like a diary of her story between her and her lover.
The book has no main ending. There is no definite ending that the plotline was going.
I enjoyed the short chapters and how lyrical the writing was.
The story follows our female lead who is trying to find a place where she feels home and at the same time understanding love.
It's the simple question she asked sometimes about sex, love and marriage really got me thinking deeply of the topic that makes me understand the main character thoughts and feelings.
I was annoyed with the male lead character and I feel like everybody is screaming at the female lead to leave him.
Then I step back and realise the characters of the book is so real that sometimes people in real life are similar to them and decide to fix rather than leaving.
Hence their actions feels very real and understandable even though if the outcome is not to everyone's agreement.
I enjoyed the book however I felt like some things doesn't make sense in the story. It feels like fillers.
"The outside world disappeared. There was only you and me. Our bodies parted for some hours during the day, but we found ourselves n each other's arms again in the evening. How I loved the way you enveloped me, one arm around my neck and shoulders, and the other holding my hip. Our legs entwined. My long hair covered my face whenever you kissed me, as if it were a veil to keep you from seeing and feeling me clearly."
March 9, 2021
Reseña en español | Review in English
Para ser justa, no sé si es que me estoy acercando a un bloqueo de lector, pero esta novela me pareció bastante regular y me atrevería a decir que un poco plana. “El discurso de un amante” está escrita como una colección de pensamientos y reflexiones de la vida de una joven inmigrante china, recién llegada al Reino Unido antes del Brexit. Es una mujer que ha perdido sus raíces en China con la muerte de sus padres y que llega a Europa para estudiar un posgrado pero sin una idea clara de su futuro. Al poco tiempo conoce a un hombre, un inmigrante australiano-alemán con quien inicia una relación y que marcará su vida por los siguientes años.
La historia la conocemos solo desde la perspectiva de la mujer y a través de los fragmentos de las conversaciones con su pareja a lo largo de los años. Los temas que toca son variados e interesantes, y van desde la inmigración, la pérdida del país de origen, la muerte de los padres, el arte, el amor y las relaciones personales. El problema que encontré es que justo considero que cubre demasiados temas y quizá me hubiera gustado ahondar en uno solo para así construir una trama más sólida. Si bien la autora logra dibujar retratos claros de las emociones humanas a través de los distintos temas abordados, no pude evitar sentirme alejada tanto de la voz de la protagonista como de su pareja. Por ejemplo, ella viaja a Reino Unido con una beca para estudiar algo relacionado con la antropología social y en algún momento regresa a China para documentar su tema de tesis. Todo es muy interesante pero al final, creo que no tiene nada que ver con la historia: si se ve como solo un fragmento de esta colección de momentos en la vida de la protagonista está bien, pero personalmente me hubiera gustado conocer más del tema y que de hecho, la experiencia significara algo en la vida de la protagonista. Pero no.
Por otra parte, me molestó que la voz de la protagonista siempre se sintiera ajena, distante: como si nada la importara. Realmente no tenía idea por qué había elegido Reino Unido ni sus estudios y casi casi creo que le hubiera dado igual relacionarse con el australiano alemán que con cualquier otro. Y entiendo, sin duda hay tantos seres humanos parecidos –que andan sin rumbo- y sé que no es raro, ni tiene nada de malo estar cuestionándonos a los 40 años qué es lo que deseamos de nuestra vida pero, en verdad que no me apeteció leer sobre un personaje que tiene más dudas que yo. Puede sonar un poco duro y quizá tiene que ver más con mi estado de ánimo que otra cosa, pero no funcionó.
Además, literalmente el título de la obra se traduce como el discurso de un amante y bueno, la verdad que la relación me pareció de una flojera tremenda. Sé que todas las relaciones tienen diversos momentos y aspectos pero en el caso de los protagonistas, todo siempre fue gris, aburrido, como forzado.
En fin, otra historia más para mi catálogo de novelas olvidables.
___
I fear I am coming closer to a reading slump, because nothing that I have been reading lately seems to fully satisfy me. Given this state of mind I am not sure if this book was just very plain or it was not the right time for me to read it. A Lover's Discourse is the story of a young Chinese woman, who arrives to the United Kingdom to start her master’s degree, shortly before Brexit. She then meets a man, also an immigrant but with Australian-German heritage and they start dating. We learn their story from the woman’s perspective, and from the bits and pieces of conversations with her lover. Both characters remain unnamed throughout the story.
I believe the story had the potential to be many things but it just felt flat. The main character faces and touches on so many different subjects –immigration, loneliness, travel, love, differences between East and West, language, but perhaps I would have preferred to see her focus on one thing. The story seemed fragmented and there does not seem to be passion in anything: nor in the character’s perspective nor the author’s writing.
I also disliked how our main character seemed to be detached from anything: truly, it appears she feels no passion for anything. While I understand what the author might be trying to convey –how the loss of parents, the motherland, and the arrival to a very different country– might leave you scared and lonely at times, she was always like that. This woman goes to Europe to study a very interesting degree on social anthropology and she just seems “ok” with it: not happy, nothing. Also, her relationship to this man seems completely random: she could have started a relationship with him or with any other man. Now, of course I understand as humans, we should not be forced to know what we want of our lives when we are 20, or even 30, but this character seemed just so indifferent it bothered me. Or maybe I was just not wanting to read about this kind of characters now.
Finally, the title of this novel is a lover’s discourse and it sounded wonderful, poetic and therefore I was expecting something more passionate, perhaps epic, but the truth was the relationship was just boring and plain. Ok, ok, I know most relationships go through phases and the strongest ones are those that face hardships, but this relationship was gray and felt forced since day one.
So, there goes another book for my catalogue of forgettable books, unfortunately.
Para ser justa, no sé si es que me estoy acercando a un bloqueo de lector, pero esta novela me pareció bastante regular y me atrevería a decir que un poco plana. “El discurso de un amante” está escrita como una colección de pensamientos y reflexiones de la vida de una joven inmigrante china, recién llegada al Reino Unido antes del Brexit. Es una mujer que ha perdido sus raíces en China con la muerte de sus padres y que llega a Europa para estudiar un posgrado pero sin una idea clara de su futuro. Al poco tiempo conoce a un hombre, un inmigrante australiano-alemán con quien inicia una relación y que marcará su vida por los siguientes años.
La historia la conocemos solo desde la perspectiva de la mujer y a través de los fragmentos de las conversaciones con su pareja a lo largo de los años. Los temas que toca son variados e interesantes, y van desde la inmigración, la pérdida del país de origen, la muerte de los padres, el arte, el amor y las relaciones personales. El problema que encontré es que justo considero que cubre demasiados temas y quizá me hubiera gustado ahondar en uno solo para así construir una trama más sólida. Si bien la autora logra dibujar retratos claros de las emociones humanas a través de los distintos temas abordados, no pude evitar sentirme alejada tanto de la voz de la protagonista como de su pareja. Por ejemplo, ella viaja a Reino Unido con una beca para estudiar algo relacionado con la antropología social y en algún momento regresa a China para documentar su tema de tesis. Todo es muy interesante pero al final, creo que no tiene nada que ver con la historia: si se ve como solo un fragmento de esta colección de momentos en la vida de la protagonista está bien, pero personalmente me hubiera gustado conocer más del tema y que de hecho, la experiencia significara algo en la vida de la protagonista. Pero no.
Por otra parte, me molestó que la voz de la protagonista siempre se sintiera ajena, distante: como si nada la importara. Realmente no tenía idea por qué había elegido Reino Unido ni sus estudios y casi casi creo que le hubiera dado igual relacionarse con el australiano alemán que con cualquier otro. Y entiendo, sin duda hay tantos seres humanos parecidos –que andan sin rumbo- y sé que no es raro, ni tiene nada de malo estar cuestionándonos a los 40 años qué es lo que deseamos de nuestra vida pero, en verdad que no me apeteció leer sobre un personaje que tiene más dudas que yo. Puede sonar un poco duro y quizá tiene que ver más con mi estado de ánimo que otra cosa, pero no funcionó.
Además, literalmente el título de la obra se traduce como el discurso de un amante y bueno, la verdad que la relación me pareció de una flojera tremenda. Sé que todas las relaciones tienen diversos momentos y aspectos pero en el caso de los protagonistas, todo siempre fue gris, aburrido, como forzado.
En fin, otra historia más para mi catálogo de novelas olvidables.
___
I fear I am coming closer to a reading slump, because nothing that I have been reading lately seems to fully satisfy me. Given this state of mind I am not sure if this book was just very plain or it was not the right time for me to read it. A Lover's Discourse is the story of a young Chinese woman, who arrives to the United Kingdom to start her master’s degree, shortly before Brexit. She then meets a man, also an immigrant but with Australian-German heritage and they start dating. We learn their story from the woman’s perspective, and from the bits and pieces of conversations with her lover. Both characters remain unnamed throughout the story.
I believe the story had the potential to be many things but it just felt flat. The main character faces and touches on so many different subjects –immigration, loneliness, travel, love, differences between East and West, language, but perhaps I would have preferred to see her focus on one thing. The story seemed fragmented and there does not seem to be passion in anything: nor in the character’s perspective nor the author’s writing.
I also disliked how our main character seemed to be detached from anything: truly, it appears she feels no passion for anything. While I understand what the author might be trying to convey –how the loss of parents, the motherland, and the arrival to a very different country– might leave you scared and lonely at times, she was always like that. This woman goes to Europe to study a very interesting degree on social anthropology and she just seems “ok” with it: not happy, nothing. Also, her relationship to this man seems completely random: she could have started a relationship with him or with any other man. Now, of course I understand as humans, we should not be forced to know what we want of our lives when we are 20, or even 30, but this character seemed just so indifferent it bothered me. Or maybe I was just not wanting to read about this kind of characters now.
Finally, the title of this novel is a lover’s discourse and it sounded wonderful, poetic and therefore I was expecting something more passionate, perhaps epic, but the truth was the relationship was just boring and plain. Ok, ok, I know most relationships go through phases and the strongest ones are those that face hardships, but this relationship was gray and felt forced since day one.
So, there goes another book for my catalogue of forgettable books, unfortunately.
March 26, 2023
En Londonroman som skimrar och berör.
Bespoke-boktips av #boblmaf-Caroline. Mycket riktigt, mind the book-kompatibelt innehåll TILL DEN GRAD: promenader längs Regent's Canal, husbåtar, Barbican, National Gallery, Tate Modern, Hockneys 'A Bigger Splash', Fallingwater, Bauhaus, hortensia, sociologi, expat-liv, Italien, Nick Cave, Duras...
Bespoke-boktips av #boblmaf-Caroline. Mycket riktigt, mind the book-kompatibelt innehåll TILL DEN GRAD: promenader längs Regent's Canal, husbåtar, Barbican, National Gallery, Tate Modern, Hockneys 'A Bigger Splash', Fallingwater, Bauhaus, hortensia, sociologi, expat-liv, Italien, Nick Cave, Duras...
August 20, 2021
this book is easily one of the worst books i’ve read, so much so that i made it a game to find all its problems just to get through it. to be fair, there are some good ideas, but they are just interesting observations that ultimately don’t add to the bigger picture.
the concept of this book is compelling - on the blurb it promises “an exploration of romantic love told through fragments of conversations”, “playing with language and the cultural differences”… but how are readers supposed to buy into this love story when there’s no way to believe the two characters would get together in the first place? “you” is a condescending man who belittles and gaslights, whilst our heroine is a passive-aggressive, self-righteous woman who does nothing but makes sulky remarks. it isn’t a relationship of convenience either - they don’t even want the same things in life!
not only is the romance aka the foundation of this story improbable. our heroine has the most contradictory character, not in a complex multi-layered personality way but in an unrealistic character-writing way:
* is she supposed to be independent or what? she seems to like spending time by herself, she moved halfway across the world to pursue her phd, and went back to china alone to film for her thesis… but she also threw everything away to build her life around a guy that she didn’t even seem to be in love with.
* she reads great works of literature and philosophy but didn't know what brexit is, or that hanover is a city in germany.
and she never changed… it’s infuriating to see a person constantly complaining but offering no resolution, it’s even more infuriating when you’re in her point of view. she never learnt to appreciate other cultures or expand her narrow mind. at the beginning she said she wanted to be a “woman of the world”, but towards the end she was still complaining about britain and germany and stereotyping people - calling her new family privileged, hating them for no reason, whilst moping over the fact that she’s a “chinese peasant”…. her repeat mentions of language barriers and rootlessness get old too. it almost feels that it’s the author’s agenda to make the heroine as annoyingly naive and foreign as possible, maybe to appeal to the mass market? does she not expect chinese people to read this book too? at one point, she said there’s no such word / concept as “claustrophobic” in chinese - there is and it’s called “壓迫感”. who’s she trying to fool?
granted, our heroine did have some interesting things to say - particularly the ones on gender differences, and opposing concepts such as landscape vs architecture, communism vs feudalism. but they all happened at the beginning of the book and ultimately don’t add to the story. it feels that the author made the love story up just so she could (barely) weave all these vignettes into one.
a compilation of musings told through stages of a romantic relationship reminds me of Essays in Love. true to its title, that book really does focus on romance and love vs this book which is all over the place, built on a love story that isn’t even a love story. haven’t read the original A Lover's Discourse: Fragments which has inspired this book, so i can’t make a comparison. maybe barthes’s book is like this too. who knows. at least this "re-make" is short.
the concept of this book is compelling - on the blurb it promises “an exploration of romantic love told through fragments of conversations”, “playing with language and the cultural differences”… but how are readers supposed to buy into this love story when there’s no way to believe the two characters would get together in the first place? “you” is a condescending man who belittles and gaslights, whilst our heroine is a passive-aggressive, self-righteous woman who does nothing but makes sulky remarks. it isn’t a relationship of convenience either - they don’t even want the same things in life!
not only is the romance aka the foundation of this story improbable. our heroine has the most contradictory character, not in a complex multi-layered personality way but in an unrealistic character-writing way:
* is she supposed to be independent or what? she seems to like spending time by herself, she moved halfway across the world to pursue her phd, and went back to china alone to film for her thesis… but she also threw everything away to build her life around a guy that she didn’t even seem to be in love with.
* she reads great works of literature and philosophy but didn't know what brexit is, or that hanover is a city in germany.
and she never changed… it’s infuriating to see a person constantly complaining but offering no resolution, it’s even more infuriating when you’re in her point of view. she never learnt to appreciate other cultures or expand her narrow mind. at the beginning she said she wanted to be a “woman of the world”, but towards the end she was still complaining about britain and germany and stereotyping people - calling her new family privileged, hating them for no reason, whilst moping over the fact that she’s a “chinese peasant”…. her repeat mentions of language barriers and rootlessness get old too. it almost feels that it’s the author’s agenda to make the heroine as annoyingly naive and foreign as possible, maybe to appeal to the mass market? does she not expect chinese people to read this book too? at one point, she said there’s no such word / concept as “claustrophobic” in chinese - there is and it’s called “壓迫感”. who’s she trying to fool?
granted, our heroine did have some interesting things to say - particularly the ones on gender differences, and opposing concepts such as landscape vs architecture, communism vs feudalism. but they all happened at the beginning of the book and ultimately don’t add to the story. it feels that the author made the love story up just so she could (barely) weave all these vignettes into one.
a compilation of musings told through stages of a romantic relationship reminds me of Essays in Love. true to its title, that book really does focus on romance and love vs this book which is all over the place, built on a love story that isn’t even a love story. haven’t read the original A Lover's Discourse: Fragments which has inspired this book, so i can’t make a comparison. maybe barthes’s book is like this too. who knows. at least this "re-make" is short.
August 25, 2020
”- So it's like we say 'have you eaten?' instead of 'how are you?' in our home town.” (p. 208/209)
This is quite the historic event: my very first preordered book, yay! So, when it finally arrived, I was reading I Am China by the same Xiaolu Guo, I put it on hold and jumped in this one.
I don't know about you, but I kind of love everything about the writing of Xiaolu Guo. This most recent book, although not my favourite by her (I think this is UFO in Her Eyes, for the irony and the (element of) surprise), made me dreamy all the time I was reading it. I like how she constructs phrases, paragraphs, chapters, how she quotes... and what she writes about, wow, oh, wow. I take it I wrote it here before: she speaks right to me, I almost feel like I were engaged in an actual conversation with the author.
So, yes, what she writes about, I was so impressed, for a sort of short book, she inserts a whole lot of important themes, without giving *me* the impression that she is trying too much.
Count me in for your next book too, Xiaolu Guo!
Thank you.
Once again, Xiaolu Guo for president! ;)
This is quite the historic event: my very first preordered book, yay! So, when it finally arrived, I was reading I Am China by the same Xiaolu Guo, I put it on hold and jumped in this one.
I don't know about you, but I kind of love everything about the writing of Xiaolu Guo. This most recent book, although not my favourite by her (I think this is UFO in Her Eyes, for the irony and the (element of) surprise), made me dreamy all the time I was reading it. I like how she constructs phrases, paragraphs, chapters, how she quotes... and what she writes about, wow, oh, wow. I take it I wrote it here before: she speaks right to me, I almost feel like I were engaged in an actual conversation with the author.
So, yes, what she writes about, I was so impressed, for a sort of short book, she inserts a whole lot of important themes, without giving *me* the impression that she is trying too much.
Count me in for your next book too, Xiaolu Guo!
Thank you.
Once again, Xiaolu Guo for president! ;)
March 22, 2023
Dropped this after like a chapter this book is so cringe I hate how she exoticizes Chinese people and speaks about China in a self-deprecating way and the love part is also unbelievable the way she attaches herself to a random white dude yikes it’s giving white worship
December 26, 2024
The guy in this book is the literal worst but basically none of the book is dedicated to that and I thought I was going insane.
December 9, 2020
Shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize.
A strong, reasonably impressive book narrated by a young Chinese woman who moves to London to pursue a PhD in visual anthropology (she makes a documentary about workers in a small Chinese village in Guangdong Province who make a living by copying western art masterpieces and selling the reproductions) at King's College.
While in London she meets and falls in love with a young man (mixed Australian and German background) who is a landscape architect. All of this is also set against the background of the unfolding Brexit referendum and subsequent crisis. She arrives in London in December 2015.
The book is something of a homage and rifts on Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse: Fragments; in this case filtered through the fascinating cross-cultural dialogues, relationships, understandings and misunderstanding between herself and her lover; with her PhD supervisor, Grant; with her relationship with new languages, architectures and landscapes. The fragments that describe and reflect on the events in her life after arriving in London quite skillfully develop these themes:
"There had been this feeling of wu yu- wordlessness and loss of language - which has enveloped me. It reminded me of something I read in one of Barthes's books. He described how he felt when visiting japan. The strange signs and sounds. The miscommunication and the silence. The Japan of my world was London, and the strange signs and sounds were Britain".
The book includes quite intriguing even at times fraught discussions and debates concerning aesthetics and art with her partner, often in the context of landscape and architecture. There's scope here for exploring cultural differences and tensions around this which Xiaolu Guo takes up thoughtfully.
While visiting her partner's homeland, Australia, and encountering its very different landscapes ("Vast land. Vast emptiness with bright sunshine on deep green trees. So strange, the name of every town here came from England, even the street names: Queens Street, Adelaide Street and Richmond Road. Colonial identity was fully present. Even though this identity was artificial - this sunny dry land had little to do with the rainy cold country called Great Britain. Did they not want to escape from the old Empire? Instead, they tried to bring it with them.') she reflects that the "romantic island no longer exists" that she nostalgically remembers from an earlier trip to far North Queensland:
"I remember the feeling of looking at ancient Chinese ink paintings when I was a schoolgirl, and how beautiful the landscape depicted in those images seemed to be. And how I would spend time looking for hills and rocks and bridges which resembled what I had seen in those paintings by the old masters. But the painted landscapes were never to be found, or never came alive in front of my eyes. Where were they? Either they had never existed and were just inventions in the minds of artists, or they had been destroyed by those who came later, people who were in love with new technologies and man-made nature"
This passage deftly covers key themes around representation and meaning, also themes that preoccupy Barthes in his A Lover's Discourse. So there's an interesting writing back, even against Barthes going on here. There's a significant meta-fictional element playing out with all of this also being about the challenges of representation in literary fiction, including the complexities of the reader / writer relationship.
Here's the thing: I'm not sure Xiaolu Guo adds anything much new to how many others have taken up these themes; the inter-cultural dimension though is significant and why I'm rating it a 4, perhaps should be closer to a 3.5. As the earlier quotations show it's competently writing, with some incisive even delightful passages. But for me it all felt a little tepid and it all never quite came alive in front of my eyes. I didn't quite connect with it, but I do admire the measured, restrained skill with which it's executed. Formally, the fragmentary, episodic, reflective approach (often essayistic and documentary in tone; perhaps reflecting the author's film-maker background and the central characters interest in visual; anthropology) is interesting, but really nothing much new here and I generally expect a little more experimentation I guess from Goldsmith's shortlisted books.
A strong, reasonably impressive book narrated by a young Chinese woman who moves to London to pursue a PhD in visual anthropology (she makes a documentary about workers in a small Chinese village in Guangdong Province who make a living by copying western art masterpieces and selling the reproductions) at King's College.
While in London she meets and falls in love with a young man (mixed Australian and German background) who is a landscape architect. All of this is also set against the background of the unfolding Brexit referendum and subsequent crisis. She arrives in London in December 2015.
The book is something of a homage and rifts on Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse: Fragments; in this case filtered through the fascinating cross-cultural dialogues, relationships, understandings and misunderstanding between herself and her lover; with her PhD supervisor, Grant; with her relationship with new languages, architectures and landscapes. The fragments that describe and reflect on the events in her life after arriving in London quite skillfully develop these themes:
"There had been this feeling of wu yu- wordlessness and loss of language - which has enveloped me. It reminded me of something I read in one of Barthes's books. He described how he felt when visiting japan. The strange signs and sounds. The miscommunication and the silence. The Japan of my world was London, and the strange signs and sounds were Britain".
The book includes quite intriguing even at times fraught discussions and debates concerning aesthetics and art with her partner, often in the context of landscape and architecture. There's scope here for exploring cultural differences and tensions around this which Xiaolu Guo takes up thoughtfully.
While visiting her partner's homeland, Australia, and encountering its very different landscapes ("Vast land. Vast emptiness with bright sunshine on deep green trees. So strange, the name of every town here came from England, even the street names: Queens Street, Adelaide Street and Richmond Road. Colonial identity was fully present. Even though this identity was artificial - this sunny dry land had little to do with the rainy cold country called Great Britain. Did they not want to escape from the old Empire? Instead, they tried to bring it with them.') she reflects that the "romantic island no longer exists" that she nostalgically remembers from an earlier trip to far North Queensland:
"I remember the feeling of looking at ancient Chinese ink paintings when I was a schoolgirl, and how beautiful the landscape depicted in those images seemed to be. And how I would spend time looking for hills and rocks and bridges which resembled what I had seen in those paintings by the old masters. But the painted landscapes were never to be found, or never came alive in front of my eyes. Where were they? Either they had never existed and were just inventions in the minds of artists, or they had been destroyed by those who came later, people who were in love with new technologies and man-made nature"
This passage deftly covers key themes around representation and meaning, also themes that preoccupy Barthes in his A Lover's Discourse. So there's an interesting writing back, even against Barthes going on here. There's a significant meta-fictional element playing out with all of this also being about the challenges of representation in literary fiction, including the complexities of the reader / writer relationship.
Here's the thing: I'm not sure Xiaolu Guo adds anything much new to how many others have taken up these themes; the inter-cultural dimension though is significant and why I'm rating it a 4, perhaps should be closer to a 3.5. As the earlier quotations show it's competently writing, with some incisive even delightful passages. But for me it all felt a little tepid and it all never quite came alive in front of my eyes. I didn't quite connect with it, but I do admire the measured, restrained skill with which it's executed. Formally, the fragmentary, episodic, reflective approach (often essayistic and documentary in tone; perhaps reflecting the author's film-maker background and the central characters interest in visual; anthropology) is interesting, but really nothing much new here and I generally expect a little more experimentation I guess from Goldsmith's shortlisted books.
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