China Doll (Paperback)

by Talia Carner (Author)
Key Phrases: die unloved, flower babies, snuff bottle, New York, Kong Ruiji, Dying Rooms (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Against both the timeless beauty and cutthroat attitudes that pervade China, Carner has created a page-turning, globe-spanning adventure." -- Annie Blachley, Correspondent, The Los Angeles Times,

"Against both the timeless beauty and cutthroat attitudes that pervade China, Carner has created a page-turning, globe-spanning adventure." --Annie Blachley, Correspondent, The Los Angeles Times,

"My arm longing to hold every child in China Doll's impassioned pages." -- Wendy Reid Crisp, Author, “I Want To Be 60” and “From the Back Pew.”

"My arm longing to hold every child in China Doll's impassioned pages." --Wendy Reid Crisp, Author, “I Want To Be 60” and “From the Back Pew.”

"Spicy and worldly, a journey through the intrigues of Chinese-American relations, corporate greed, and pop world machinations." -- Susan Anderson, Author, "From Abandonment to Healing" and “Black Swan.”

"Spicy and worldly, a journey through the intrigues of Chinese-American relations, corporate greed, and pop world machinations." --Susan Anderson, Author, "From Abandonment to Healing" and “Black Swan.”

Product Description
A riveting journey to save one life

In a tale of passion and rescue, an abandoned Chinese infant drives an unwitting pop star to become a formidable heroine.

An explosive story of the inner workings of the music industry, of the state of Chinese orphanages, and of US-Sino relationship as they clash with the fate of a baby and the determination of a woman caught in international intrigue and corporate power games. Set against the kaleidoscopic sights, sounds and smells of China's main cities and countryside, the adoptive mother struggles against the unthinkable personal sacrifices of individuals as the Chinese nation forfeits its glorious past and art in order to feed its people and move forward.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Windsprint Press; 1 edition (September 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977382125
• ISBN-13: 978-0977382125
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #395,006 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Painstaking research; painful message, September 15, 2006

By	Susan O'Neill (Andover, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

With China Doll, Talia Carner, late of Puppet Child, is once again advocating for children--this time, on a global stage. Literally. Her heroine Nola, a singer at the peak of her game, is sweeping through major Chinese cities on a goodwill tour with full entourage and spare-no-expense staging, when a shadowy figure thrusts a baby girl into her arms. Nola struggles to keep the child, battling the ghosts of her past and the very real and powerful spectres of her management and global politics.

Like Puppet Child, this book had me thoroughly engrossed, turning pages into the wee hours of the night. Also, like Puppet Child, it opened a door into the institutionalized mistreatment of children--this time, in Chinese "dying rooms," where drugged orphans languish until they are no longer in need of the scant care on offer.

Carner has done her homework here. Her research shapes and enhances the story, but her passion for justice brings it alive. This is accessible but important fiction that highlights both the simple ethics governing the life and death of children, and the political dance between China and the US that makes solutions to an archaic system of neglect so tragically, heartbreakingly complicated.

In both her novels, Talia Carner speaks for the children. Let us hope that someone of influence is listening.

Susan O'Neill, author, Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazingly Close to Real, July 13, 2008

By	Kay Bratt - See all my reviews

I worked in a Chinese orphanage for over four years and can tell you that reading this story put me back in the middle of all the emotions and outrage I dealt with on a daily basis. Many people think that negative stories about orphanages shouldn't be written, that they can't be that bad---but the truth is that some of them are that bad. The more that people open their eyes at what is really happening, the better chance at improving conditions we will have. Awareness is the key.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Suspense + Human Rights + Love, October 28, 2006

By	Walter Klores (NYC, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

What a powerful, multi-layered experience living with China Doll this weekend! I feel as if I've been to China. One-third into the book, I passed up a Saturday night movie so I could stay home and read late into the night.

It takes consummate skill to weave many stories into one--pop star, budding activist/mother, sister, daughter, wife, lover--and explain the transformative moment of being handed and falling in love with a baby, Lulu. Is this a suspense story (Grisham style), a double-love story? The author's use of imagery--flower, bird-- enables us to feel the loss, emergence and self-emancipation in the midst of dramatic escapes and rescues. I never saw the protagonist as a doll or caged bird; she has enormous family burdens and the fearsome taskmaster of her talent and career. (Even her religion, Judaism, is associated with suffering and yearning for freedom, never innocence.) Only babies have innocence, if there is love or at least humane care. But these are some of the contradictions that inform the drama.

Moral and political dimensions touch us deeply in China Doll. The human rights issues of our day form more than a backdrop: the Dying Rooms in China, the international adoption movement, the high-profile cases in faraway places with the emotional and legal dilemmas that cannot be disentangled. In China Doll, these well-researched issues are instrumental to the pulsing narrative line, but are never heavy handed. We come to see that orphanages in our time represent the human toll of oppressive regimes and dislocation when something or someone pushes back the curtain. So, there are troubling and real connections between a woman fighting to come into her own, a westerner fighting for the life of a baby, and the complex nature of help and rescue when it is regarded as exposure, intrusion or worse.

The rescue cases of this book (Nola's sister, baby, self) are depicted in their complexity: spiritual, power-charged, disruptive, and potentially self-serving or self-compromising. But we have no doubt: help is crucial and it takes a strong stomach. In the end this gripping story (that should also be a movie) brings us romance. But it also brings us rich conversations so that we not romanticize the risky and perilous nature of the personal and political and how much they are part of real love.