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The People's Republic of Desire
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Better Together
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
As Wang reveals in intimate detail, today's affluent Beijing women—educated, ambitious, coddled only children enamored of all things Western—are a generation unto themselves. The hyperobservant narrator of this fascinating novel (after Lili: A Novel of Tiananmen) is 20-something Niuniu, a journalist who was born in the United States but grew up in China and returned to America for college and graduate school. Now she's back in Beijing nursing a broken heart and discovering "what it means to be Chinese" in a money- and status-obsessed city altered by economic and sexual liberalization. Supporting Niuniu—and downing a few drinks with her—are her best buddies: entrepreneurial entertainment agent Beibei, sexy fashion mag editor Lulu and Oxford-educated CC. Sounds like the cast of Sex in the Forbidden City, but the thick cultural descriptions distinguish the novel from commercial women's fiction. A nonnative English speaker, Wang observes gender politics among the nouveau riche in careful, reportorial prose. Though Niuniu's romantic backstory forms a tenuous thread between the chapters, and the novel—based on Wang's newspaper column of the same title—doesn't finally hold together, this is a trenchant, readable account of a society in flux. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
After attending college and graduate school in the U.S., the heroine of Wang's novel, a journalist also named Wang, returns to Beijing and finds her homeland dramatically changed. From Hong Kong to Shanghai, China has become a country utterly spellbound by status, celebrity, and sex. Wang and her three friends--comely fashion editor Lulu, brash entertainment executive BeiBei, and CC, a public-relations account manager equally obsessed with labels and love--regularly meet to dish and reveal details about the daily dramas in their lives. (For four cosmopolitan women, they are surprisingly dense about men.) While Wang's prose is pithy and wry, her short, staccato chapters often seem more like sound bites than social commentary. Among the best moments: her ruminations on Internet romance, metropolitan life, and the world's disparate definitions of beauty (what plays in Peoria doesn't play in Peking). Most chapters end with a list of lively Chinese phrases, from toujizhe (an opportunist) and xingui (nouveau riche) to Lile Ma? ("Have You Divorced Yet?"), a modern twist on saying hello that plays on a standard Cantonese greeting that translates to "Have you eaten rice yet?" Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
See all Editorial Reviews
As Wang reveals in intimate detail, today's affluent Beijing women—educated, ambitious, coddled only children enamored of all things Western—are a generation unto themselves. The hyperobservant narrator of this fascinating novel (after Lili: A Novel of Tiananmen) is 20-something Niuniu, a journalist who was born in the United States but grew up in China and returned to America for college and graduate school. Now she's back in Beijing nursing a broken heart and discovering "what it means to be Chinese" in a money- and status-obsessed city altered by economic and sexual liberalization. Supporting Niuniu—and downing a few drinks with her—are her best buddies: entrepreneurial entertainment agent Beibei, sexy fashion mag editor Lulu and Oxford-educated CC. Sounds like the cast of Sex in the Forbidden City, but the thick cultural descriptions distinguish the novel from commercial women's fiction. A nonnative English speaker, Wang observes gender politics among the nouveau riche in careful, reportorial prose. Though Niuniu's romantic backstory forms a tenuous thread between the chapters, and the novel—based on Wang's newspaper column of the same title—doesn't finally hold together, this is a trenchant, readable account of a society in flux. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
After attending college and graduate school in the U.S., the heroine of Wang's novel, a journalist also named Wang, returns to Beijing and finds her homeland dramatically changed. From Hong Kong to Shanghai, China has become a country utterly spellbound by status, celebrity, and sex. Wang and her three friends--comely fashion editor Lulu, brash entertainment executive BeiBei, and CC, a public-relations account manager equally obsessed with labels and love--regularly meet to dish and reveal details about the daily dramas in their lives. (For four cosmopolitan women, they are surprisingly dense about men.) While Wang's prose is pithy and wry, her short, staccato chapters often seem more like sound bites than social commentary. Among the best moments: her ruminations on Internet romance, metropolitan life, and the world's disparate definitions of beauty (what plays in Peoria doesn't play in Peking). Most chapters end with a list of lively Chinese phrases, from toujizhe (an opportunist) and xingui (nouveau riche) to Lile Ma? ("Have You Divorced Yet?"), a modern twist on saying hello that plays on a standard Cantonese greeting that translates to "Have you eaten rice yet?" Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
See all Editorial Reviews
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