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Lost And Forgotten Languages Of Shanghai (2011)

by Ruiyan Xu(Favorite Author)

3.04 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1408809958 (ISBN13: 9781408809952)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Bloomsbury UK

review 1: Some books do well when heard on cd, and some suffer. I think this is the case with this one. The voice of one of the main female characters was so annoying and unlike how it was described, that it totally detracted from the story. The expert doctor called to work with the Chinese character who has lost his ability to speak Chinese in a rare accident comes out as cheap, brash southern accent... instead of a refined educated one that it should be. She's meant to be loud (American as opposed to Chinese culture), but the sum effect is distracting from the flow of the book (imho).The different characters' reactions to this bizarre turn of events (his Chinese wife who can no longer communicate with him), the main character and even the doctor... but at other times you just want... more to slap them. The way the love between the Chinese couple is depicted before accident would lead one to believe that these two mature, intelligent people could see their way to dealing with it more productively. I gave it three stars, but because of the above, 2.5 would be more accurate.
review 2: Oh, I really dislike this book. Too wordy. Poor character development. Scenes that don't advance the plot. I got over half-way through and had to give up. I was listening to it in the car, if I'd had a copy in hand, I would have flipped through to find out the answer to my questions, "does Li Jing learn Chinese again?", "does having speech therapy (from a neurologist) in their first language help them recover their second/dominant language?". less

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