Customer Reviews

Ocean of Words:Army Stories

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
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Ha Jin brilliantly evokes emotion in short stories that may take some an epic novel to create the same impact. His words are sunbeams bouncing on desolate land and you want to continue despite the heartbreak that you may only survive simply to survive. Never to fully live in the light. He is the most eloquent writer and he allows us to view a world not known to most Americans: China under Mao. Be swept away with words and emotions.

When I read Ocean of Words, I was immediately reminded of two works by "the enemy" from this work, Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time and Tolstoy's Hadji Murad. All three works deal with fear, nature and the other. All three are strangely at peace with their situation and surrounding. All three are great. After reading this collection, I ran out and bought The Bridegroom and Waiting. Neither of these works rose to the level of this collection. This is one of the best short story collections published in the last twenty years. I would recommend this collection to anyone.

The stories by Hai Jin are superb! The are easy to read and always touching. There is no story in this book that I didn't like it!

I picked up An Ocean of Words from a staff recommendations section of the bookstore. I am glad that I did. This book is a wonderful collection of short stories. This book was great.

The stories all take place on the border of China and the USSR during the early 1970s when the two communist countries actually came pretty close to war. The stories are actually a microcosim of Communist China as a whole.

The stories are wonderful and I highly recommend this book not just to sinophiles but to anyone who wants to read a great collection of stories.

Ha Jin returns again and again to the same setting - the Chinese army encampments on the frozen and tense Sino-Soviet border of the 1970s -- and comes back with wonderful, spare stories. Basically, they are about people who stubbornly remain human - frail, passionate, frightened - despite a system that tries to bend them into something else. I especially like the way Ha Jin chose to tell the story of two young lovers running off in "Too Late"; the joyous scene of camaraderie at the end of "Uncle Piao's Birthday Dinners"; and the complex motivations of the narrator of "The Fellow Townsmen," who does the right thing against his own instincts and his own best interests. I can't wait to read, well, "Waiting" and "Under the Red Flag."

"... whenever we slack a little in ideological education, problems will appear among our men."

Ha Jin, who is easily one of my favorite writers, is in top form in this collection of stories set along the border between Russia and China during the 1970s, when the two nations seemed headed for war. Jin captures the Chinese soldiers in perfect detail and renders them with a great care; they come across as deeply human, complex beings trapped in some pretty ruthless situations. They have little education and few choices in their lives - their only mandate is to serve the revolutionary ideal as prescribed by Chairman Mao and to stamp out "the disease of liberalism" that is plaguing their nation. Education, love, free thought, and many other qualities most of us take for granted are denied them. Even friendship is a dicey proposition, as any one of their compatriots could stab them in the back the moment an opportunity to get ahead in the party presents itself. Among Jin's characters you'll meet a dangerously intellectual young man whose studies may be screwing up his future, a lonely radio worker so desperate for female companionship that merely hearing a woman's voice is enough to steal his heart forever, an instructor who is given the opportunity to either get revenge on a former enemy or show him mercy, a depraved soldier who shockingly acts out against the teachings he has been forced to adapt to, and more. In all of their stories we see the outcome of a generation of men who have been brainwashed to live up to an ideal that even they don't always understand or agree with, but that they must work with in order to get ahead - or, in some cases, just to survive. More than one character falls victim to a witch-hunt of sorts that the soldiers engage in to prove that they are the most loyal to the cause. Without a doubt this was a dangerous time to live in, not only because of the ever-present Russian threat mustering along the borders but because of the paranoia and greed driving one's fellow soldiers to unexpected acts of treachery. Not to mention that what is acceptable one week may become taboo the next, so one must always be careful about which doctrines you follow and how strictly.

As always, Jin has put together a powerful portrait and some spellbinding character studies. While some readers may be put off by his stoic style, it is impossible to deny the enormity of his talent. Any reader would be hard-pressed not to find his writing compelling. I would highly recommend this collection, and I would also recommend picking up War Trash, which is my favorite of Jin's books so far, and Waiting: A Novel, a great read and a National Book Award Winner to boot. I would also recommend Tim O'Brien's Vietnam-era story collection The Things They Carried.
Grade: A

I loved these stories! Ha Jin does an excellent job at not only writing amusing stories, but he also shows the reader the very nature of Communism in China during the Cultural Revolution. Informative, funny, entertaining, I put the book down only for sleeping and eating (and not even sometimes).

engrossing, elegantly written stories. Ha jin's prose is addictively easy to read (i gobbled it up in one sitting)...sign me up for his next book!

I'm very critical of some Chinese writers like Amy Tan for their distortions of a life they haven't experienced. But this doesn't apply to Ha Jin, who survived the Revolution and was a soldier. I really like this collection of stories because Ha Jin excels in writing vignettes by injecting fresh details. Anyone who is curious about Communist China should read this book. Skip his novels though.

Poignant, warm and funny, this lively collection of stories wraps around the reader like that of a real-life experience. The setting is the deep freeze of the cold war - and Russia and China are on most antagonistic terms. But that tension is reflective - as the Chinese themselves seem to, absurdly, turn on themselves, at least in spirit. No lack of wit and great storytelling in "Ocean of Words."