--see review in vol 1 and vol 5--

Xi-feng is my favorite and no one can convince me otherwise. Is she a bit messy? Yes, but I still love her. I think I would absolutely hate her in real life, but in the same way of I'm against my brother but my brother and I are against everyone else (Xi-feng being the proverbial brother in this situation). I also loved Qin-shi but not quite as much, for reasons that I can't possibly share with those who haven't read it. I hope Xi-feng keeps being her bad self in the next volume, which I will soon be embarking on. That being said, I must share a grievance of mine that has more to do with me than the book itself. I found myself in dire need of a family tree pretty much immediately. Why, you ask? Because pretty much every character is related and they're introduced in large batches and they live together so they all blended together. This isn't always a problem for me. Even in One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is arguably worse because it actually has characters with identical names, even sometimes over ten characters with the same name running around at the same time, I had no problems because I had a family tree going into it. I did not have a similar aide for this one, however. I spent several hundred pages ruminating on my inability to keep characters straight. Who were Qin-shi's in-laws? And she was married to Jia Rong, I think? Where did Jia Zheng/Zhen/Qiang/Lian/Lan (seriously, I could keep going on) come into this? I was at the point where I was even considering making a family tree of my own. Then, when I was about 500 pages in (yes, 500 out of the 520ish that are actual text and not appendices) I put my book down upside down to help a patron at work and I spotted something on the back cover, which I had neglected to read. Friends, there was a family tree in the back of the book the whole time, and it said that very clearly under the blurb on the back cover. It always comes back to smarter not harder, I suppose. A masterpiece overall. Much saucier than one would expect, yet at the same time philosophical. I especially enjoyed the tags at the end of the chapters which encouraged the reader to read on. As someone who tries to read a minimum amount each day and often doesn't read extra, this was the support I needed. ( )

I've been told this novel is to Chinese literature more or less what the works of Shakespeare are to English literature. Said that way, who could resist at least trying it?

Very different kind of book than I'm used to -- but interesting. There's a lot of cultural context that I'm just completely ignorant of, so I picked up a readers guide to help -- and it does. That said, that guide is rather basic, and my sense is there's a wealth of ideas that I'm just totally missing.

All that said, its fascinating and I'm enjoying it.
Moving onto the second volume (of 5) now.

(2023 Review 5) ( )

read for book club ( )

I was not expecting this to play in so many modes. I guess what I was expecting was a melodramatic or diaphonous romance with large dollops of allegorical myth and mysticism. But most of the story is very grounded, even earthy, at times erotic, comic-erotic, or scatological. I seem to be in the minority here, but I still can't take seriously the frame story of the stone or its appearance in the hero's mouth at birth. It seems more like joking authorial artifice to me (and all the better for that).

The spicy Xi-feng is the stand-out character from this volume. But I was very impressed by how the Bao-yu, Bao-chai, Dai-yu threesome are developed and by how we're encouraged to laugh at their foibles and follies while still sort of sympathising with these unimaginably rich kids.

What's clear is that Cao is one of those congenial authors who doesn't descend to abusing their characters or their readers. He's playful with his use of poetry (the excellence of Hawkes' translation helps here), with his little teaser-couplets at the end of each chapter, with how he jumps from one story strand to another. Somehow he reminds me of Sterne in how he's at pains to make reader and characters welcome in his text, and not to take life too seriously. ( )