A series of short stories features such offbeat characters as a doctor-detective-warrior who sleeps like a hippo in a cistern and a homicidal maniac housewife whose husband ends up in the hospital with a stomach full of needles."
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
These stories, written between 1986 and 1994, 10 years after the death of Mao--and during and following 1989's Tiananmen Square massacre--are suffused with the tone of that bizarre and radical time. Can Xue is no stranger to controversy; she's considered one of the most radical fiction writers in contemporary China. These stories vary in length and style--some are dark and creepy, reminiscent of ghost stories; others are surreal, and a few seem to parody the formal rhetoric of the Communist state. Each one, however, boasts lots of action riddled with unpredictable twists.
From Library Journal
Chinese writer Can Xue (Old Floating Cloud: Two Novellas, Northwestern Univ., 1991) continues her pursuit of the nightmarish in this most recent collection of ten short stories and one novella. She explores difficult connections between and among loved ones, featuring partners, parents, and siblings who vanish and reappear or sicken with unexplainable and improbable diseases. Stories are set in perpetual darkness, characters suffer from sleeplessness and other forms of disorientation, and filth is prominent. An air of confusion with reality and existence prevails through all the stories, which are best read one at a time, partly because the dreamlike quality makes for difficult reading and partly because the descriptions of filth and disease can be overpowering. Recommended for academic libraries.?Rebecca A. Stuhr, Grinnell Coll. Libs., Iowa
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
5 stars,
By
This review is from: The Embroidered Shoes: Stories (Hardcover)
The comparisons to Kafka and Borges are right on - Can Xue's stories are indeed bizarre, often meriting a second reading, but they are enthralling. This book is highly recommended, as are her other two.
2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A matter of style,
By Manola Sommerfeld (California) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Embroidered Shoes: Stories (Hardcover)
Lisa Michaels, from The New York Times Book Review, hits it right on the nose: "Reading Can Xue's fiction is like running downhill in the dark; you've got momentum, but you don't know where you're headed.... the stories in The Embroidered Shoes describe strange, disordered worlds where people speak in riddles and time and setting are as fickle as the wind." If this is a style you enjoy, then go for it. To me, it was a very hard, dissatisfying read. As a reader, i prefer to have more structure and more guidance from the author. I found Can Xue's stories disjointed and poorly integrated. Please beware...
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