3.75

Hard to believe this is billed as Mo Yan's masterpiece ("You can skip my other novels, but you must read Big Breasts and Wide Hips").

The writing, story and characters are competent, but not exceptional or compelling. I bailed after about 50 pages. Maybe another time when I'm out of other things to read.

This novel is supposed to be deeply allegorical and political etc. But It's also a psychedelic brain fuck. The protagonist stopped breastfeeding when he was 13, had 7 sisters, all of whom lead very interesting lives. The real story, though, seems to be about his mother. As I said, it's a delicious mindfuck.

When I began this book, I almost put it back down because of all the violence at the beginning. I stuck with it and the story really drew me in. The book follows a Chinese family almost for an entire decade. The main character is "obsessed" with breasts, mainly because his mother continued nursing him until age 10?? Then she taught him to nurse off of a goat. He has many sisters and their stories are almost more interesting than his life. I really enjoyed the growth and development of his mother. The book is not translated to English, and is therefore much easier to read than most Chinese stories.
Enjoy!

Let me first start by saying that anybody who writes off this book because "the names are confusing" is an idiot. Chinese surnames come first, get over it.

Moving on... It's rare that I find myself feeling so conflicted about a book.

First of all: Big Breasts and Wide Hips is spectacular in a number of ways.

As an account of China's Great Leap Forward, it's instructive and insightful. When studying the great events of history, your notion of the way things happened often conforms to the structure of the history books you read. So periods like the Japanese occupation and the Communist revolution read as distinct entities in time, when for those on the ground, they happen as a sequence and are thus intimately interrelated.

In that sense, Mo Yan's book is similar to One Hundred Years Of Solitude, in the way the Shangguan family coasts the tide of history, witnessing the back and forth of warring factions that emerge around them in Northeast Gaomi Prefecture with every generation.

Also a big contributor to the book's cultural significance, I think, is its overtly feminist leanings. While it is sprinkled with male heroes like Sima Ku and Sima Liang, the Shangguan women (and even many of the female villains) exude an inner strength that is often lacking in Western literature.

Of course, the flipside of that feminist leaning dovetails into the book's biggest weakness by far: the main character Shangguan Jintong.

There's really nothing meaty on this character for the reader to latch onto. He never becomes anything more than a pathetic wretch — a leech on the life force of everybody that surrounds him.

I would find myself verbally exhorting his obsession with breasts. Enough already! We get it! It almost became banal after a while, so often did he talk about them. But when he grows up, it doesn't get any better — he actually became more pathetic than he was as a spoiled child. I suppose I wouldn't have minded if it had seemed to serve some purpose, but looking back on the book's 500 some-odd pages, I just don't see it.

In any case, I'm glad I read this one because of the fascinating personal account from the ground of an amazing time in the history of China.

Por medio de una novela muy bien escrita me acerco un poco a la cultura china, me costó un poco seguirle el hilo a los nombres pero es realmente entretenido

Really enjoyed this perspective. It isn't like many other "Chinese dynasty" stories. It has lots of humor and striking things (like people giving birth in the midst of a war and horses exploding when Japanese bomb the Chinese provinces) told in very matter-of-fact manner.

That certain vietnamese one-star rating really baffles me. Someone should consider taking a crash course in Chinese history before reading this book. Anw, many good boobs descriptions, Freud could never.