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Dream Of Ding Village (2005)

by Yan Lianke(Favorite Author)

3.75 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0802119328 (ISBN13: 9780802119322)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Grove Press

review 1: Not nearly emotive enough for my tastes; the prose felt short, choppy and simplistic, the characters were given firm outlines but were without emotional depth, and there was little sophistication in style or vocabulary. Possibly that style a reflects the village's poverty and the inability of the villagers to improve their lot, but I felt this could either have been written better or translated better. I didn't derive a lot of pleasure from reading this, and didn't feel at all connected to anyone in the book - it was impossible to get any insights into any of the characters. The subject matter was interesting, and the typical 'corrupt official' character very much present (who outraged me morally), but otherwise it felt like a pretty barren novel.
review 2: Des... morepite the tragic nature of its subject matter, this is a funny and engaging book. The story of a village devastated by AIDS, it explores human relationships and how people react when something as final as an incurable illness affects an entire community. Inhibitions are lost and social contracts are ripped up. In a strange way, though, the illness ceases to matter. It is a background detail. At the centre of the story is one family - the cause of the AIDS epidemic, the exploiters of it, and the source of tension between neighbours and within its own structure. The use of dream sequences to move the story along reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's writing, and I enjoyed the dispassionate narration of the tale. less

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