3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You have GOT to read this book!!!, January 6, 2010
This review is from: Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen: A Novel (Paperback)
This book is laugh-out-loud funny, sexy and is put together masterfully. 41 brilliant tales add up to a larger vision. The cleaver-wielding granny, the wild twins and the Double Happiness restaurant and all the supporting characters make up a fascinating pluralistic 21st century Chinese-American world. And of course, fish sing and cockroaches scat and grannies fly around and throw death stars. REVENGE OF THE MOONCAKE VIXEN is an exciting journey! It's an amazing ride! And a fun, fun reading experience. You need a big box of tissues as you will laugh yourself to tears, then cry when you read about the donkey.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chin's Revenge, January 4, 2010
This review is from: Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen: A Novel (Paperback)
Much like her poetry, Marilyn Chin's novel, REVENGE OF THE MOONCAKE VIXEN, provides the reader with a cacophony of voices and perspectives. In this novel, consisting of short, short short, and not so short vignettes, Chin emerges as a master storyteller. It manifests a Shahrazad-like quality; one episode is never enough. Craftily constructed, REVENGE OF THE MOONCAKE VIXEN seduces readers and leaves us hungry for the next tale.
The story of twins Mei Ling and Moonie unifies the narrative as does the presence of and their reminiscing about their Grandmother. The revenge tales, the Buddhist stories and fables provide insight into the struggles of each of the sisters to claim voice and legitimacy within systems intent on marginalizing the girls.
Chin writes with verve, humor, compassion, anger, irreverence, and sass, and she utilizes and challenges a range of literary conventions and assumptions. She confronts all ideologies that erase individual desire and difference. This novel is hilarious, and yet amidst the hilarity, a poignant story of becoming unfolds. REVENGE OF THE MOONCAKE VIXEN lingers long after one closes the book.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Immigrant coming of age tale., March 10, 2010
This review is from: Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen: A Novel (Paperback)
An immigrant coming of age tale of twins, Moonie and Mei Ling, in California under the beady eye (and cleaver) of their domineering grandmother, this tale is told in a non-linear variety of short parables and stories. It's graphic, crude and rude in many places but is informed by traditional Chinese, Taoist, Zen and Buddhist texts with a bit of kung-fu and manga for good measure.
Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (oh, how I love that title!) will almost certainly not be to everyone's taste, but I confess that I loved its originality, boldness, sassy style and the humour of it.
If this book were a CD, it would almost certainly carry one of those `'parental advisory'` stickers. Make no mistake, this is not for the overly sensitive reader. It's rude, nay even crude, in many places and that alone will probably put some people off. While I'm at it, let's get the other potential frustrations out of the way. It's a non-linear story; in fact it's more of a series of short (sometimes very short) stories and parables all about the same people that add up to a whole picture of an immigrant coming of age tale - but more about that in a moment. Finally, it has a number of areas of what might be termed either magical realism or perhaps more accurately surreal moments (talking animals included). If any of these put you off, then you will almost certainly not enjoy this strange little book. It's not a book you are likely to feel ambivalent about - it's a `love it' or `hate it' kind of book.
The fantastic characters in this story include Grandmother Wong - the mad, matriarch of the Wong family who frequently wields her meat cleaver and has a tongue sharper than a serpent's tooth but who deep down has a warm heart, and who is frankly on a hiding to nothing raising the twins, who are the stars of this book, in California while trying to maintain some of the values of the old country. The twins' parents are too busy working in the family restaurant, the Double Happiness, to have much to do with the girls.
Which brings me to the twins: Moonie and Mei Ling. They have very different characters - Moonie is tom-boyish and prone to attacking people kung-fu style, while girly-girl Mei Ling is, well, there's no nice way of saying this, a bit on the promiscuous side. That's far more polite than how Moonie would describe her, and undoubtedly more than she deserves. We get some very graphic descriptions of the antics of both girls - and believe me, these two Wongs do not make a right. After reading this book, I can assure you, you will never look at tofu in the same light again.
The book is at times angry, but mostly just very funny (in a fairly crude way) and focusses on issues of identity, culture, traditional values and immigrant issues as well as being a coming of age story as the twins emerge from the family unit into university and return to wreak havoc in California, driving the family restaurant delivery van in the holidays and getting up to no good. Towards the end of the book we get to find out how their lives turned out, particularly that of Mei Ling.
What prevents this from being just a light, shock value book is that Marilyn Chin's writing is informed by Chinese, Taoist, Zen and Buddhist tales as well as kung-fu and manga. She parodies Buddhist and Zen tales and koans - the traditional question and answer technique `'designed to be nonsensical, circuitous, often shocking and humorous to force the student to relinquish conventional thinking and thereby achieve instant enlightenment'` as Chin explains in her Postscript.
Chin uses a variety of styles and voices - some work better than others - but it is the combined effect that is so much fun. It's a short book and quick read but I would happily have read far more about these wild twins and their wonderfully mad grandmother.
And rather appropriately for a book set around the family Chinese restaurant - an hour after finishing the book, I wanted to read it all over again!
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