In a country where men dominate, this epic novel is first and foremost about women. As the title implies, the female body serves as the book's most important image and metaphor. The protagonist, Mother, is born in 1900. Married at 17 into the Shangguan family, she has nine children, only one of whom is a boy, the narrator of the book, a spoiled and ineffectual child who stands in stark contrast to his eight strong and forceful female siblings. Mother, a survivor, is the quintessential strong woman, who risks her life to save the lives of several of her children and grandchildren. The writing is full of life-picturesque, bawdy, shocking, imaginative. Each of the seven chapters represents a different time period, from the end of the Qing dynasty up through the Japanese invasion in the 1930s, the civil war, the Cultural Revolution, and the post-Mao years. In sum, this stunning novel is Mo Yan's searing vision of 20th-century China.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Ripe with spectacular detail and unflinching in its portrayal of the Shangguan family, this latest saga by Mo Yan (Red Sorghum) is a lavish feast for the senses sprawling across several decades and political regimes in 20th-century China's quasi-fictional North Gaomi region. Mo Yan's writing is bold and sometimes flinty as it draws humor from the direst of sources, and the story—the elaborate, fleet and episodic plot—is arresting and satisfying. The book opens as two creatures struggle to give birth: Shangguan Lu, the beleaguered mother of seven daughters, and the family donkey, who ends up getting the wealth of aid and sympathy from Lu's mother-in-law. It's a revealing scene that effectively lays out the themes of Mo Yan's brutal, inspired work and suggests the significance of its title: in a harsh environment like rural China where survival is not guaranteed but a privilege fought for every day, humans, and especially women, have only their bodies and their animal instincts to depend on, with fate often stepping in to play a cruel hand. However, this doesn't stop the daughters of grimly resolute Lu from developing into a clan of steely-eyed women who throughout the book make choices and meet destinies that are at turns heartening, vicious and breathtaking. Most of the book is narrated by Jintong, the weak and spoiled son who breast-feeds well into childhood, provoking derision and disgust from his sisters. His lack of stature makes him a compelling narrator, a frontline observer who is invested in the outcomes but always something of an outsider. The constant violence, rendered in Mo Yan's powerhouse prose, may make this too graphic a read for some, but those who are able to see the violence for what it is—an undeniable aspect of rural Chinese life—will find this a deeply rewarding book.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Chinese writer Yan is both revered and reviled for his blistering takes on modern China' s political landscape. (His acclaimed 1987 novel, Red Sorghum, was adapted into a major motion picture).This latest controversial epic, spanning the country's blood-splattered twentieth century, is set in fictional Northeast Gaomi County and narrated by fair-haired Jintong, the ninth child (and first son) of an indomitable woman known only as Mother. (Jintong's siblings all have different fathers, none of them Mother's impotent blacksmith husband.) Fathered by the town's Swedish pastor, spoiled Jintong takes full advantage of his role as the family's only male; at the age of seven, he still suckles at his mother's breast. In Yan's world, men are cowardly while women are admired for their courage and curves. His images run the gamut, from brutal renderings of war to a bizarre transformation of human to bird. The novel is, above all, a paean to the power of the female sex, but its voluptuous title scarcely reflects its tone. This is a haunting, daunting read that seldom loosens its gloomy grip. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Dying's easy. It's living that's hard.",
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This review is from: Big Breasts & Wide Hips: A Novel (Hardcover)
Setting this monumental family saga in rural Gaomi, in northeast China, where he grew up, Mo Yan vividly portrays political and historical events--most of them bloody--over the course of the twentieth century, from the Boxer Rebellion through the Communist Revolution, the Japanese invasion, the Cultural Revolution, and the death of Mao. Jintong, the only son of Shangguan Lu, tells the story of his remarkable mother, his eight sisters, and their families as they live through these seminal events.
Shangguan Lu's early marriage and domestic life unfolds through flashbacks. With an infertile husband, whose family beats and abuses her for failing to produce a son, she resorts to extreme measures, giving birth to eight daughters by eight different fathers before finally producing a male heir. The stories of the daughters and their marriages to men with varied political agendas reflect the history of twentieth century rural China, and its unconscionable atrocities, starvation, death from exposure, forced marches, and land seizures. Author Mo Yan, who lived through the major events depicted here, gives a thorough portrait of rural life during these historical crises. The author's style, while often exciting, is also brutally realistic. Precise physical descriptions help bring the culture and people to life, including the kind of clothing nursing mothers wear so they can feed their children in very cold weather, descriptions of the silent "snow market," and facts and figures about the minimum amount of grain needed per person to keep farm workers alive for the harvest season. But the author also uses satire, wry comments, and black humor to criticize totalitarian governments and closed societies. Providing a helpful cast of characters at the beginning of this episodic novel, Mo Yan shows a society in which individualism has little meaning. The narrator and spoiled only son, Jintong, is neither a hero nor a fully realized character in the western sense, and though much detail is given about what characters do and how they behave, less consideration is given to how they think and why they behave as they do. Author of nine novels, Mo Yan, whose pen name, ironically, means "Don't speak," has sometimes been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize. The vibrancy and accuracy of his portraits of Chinese life, his steadfast insistence on showing life as it is, rather than as it ought to be, his celebration of resourceful women, and his willingness to take risks for his art make him one of the most influential writers in the People's Republic. Mary Whipple
5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Intriguing,
By
This review is from: Big Breasts & Wide Hips: A Novel (Hardcover)
The novel is quite long, but shorter than it's original lenght. The book is twisted in some ways, but that's how you'll have to accept it. The book follows a family through four centuries and is an interesting read if you want to read about how intense life was in China during its revolutions. Mo Yan's use of magical realism definitely adds more to the novel's element.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Captivating,
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This review is from: Big Breasts, Wide Hips (Paperback)
Mo Yan, is a great writer. The story is very captivating -- fiction set in China with a backdrop of much of China's history.
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