Unusually for book blurb, the text on the back cover sums it up pretty well: “Underpaid and overworked, illegal immigrant Zou Lei survives by taking odd jobs in Chinese restaurants in the underbelly of New York, sleeping on a blackened mattress in an overcrowded boarding house. Brad Skinner, traumatised and volatile, his psyche ravaged by three tours in Iraq, hitchhikes to the city hoping to exorcise his demons. Meeting in the margins of Queens, each finds something they long for in the other, and their unlikely love story becomes the heart of one of the most powerful and widely acclaimed novels in years.”
The novel takes a highly detailed approach to the grim and unforgiving reality of attempting to live in New York outside of mainstream society. It’s heartbreaking to read about the extent of poverty and suffering, and the unrelenting struggle the characters face. Brad’s fragile state is all too convincingly depicted: post-traumatic stress disorder has left him horribly damaged. Meeting Zou Lei appears to offer hope: “they could form an army of their own, a two-person unit, to fight these difficult battles involving his mental recovery and her immigration status”. But there are no simple solutions. Life becomes further complicated for Brad when he makes an enemy of a sadistically violent ex-con (the son of his landlady) and you sense that there won’t be a happy ending...
In many ways this is a brutal novel. It’s certainly the least sentimental “love story” I have read, although it’s not really a love story at all. Instead, it’s an account of two desperate people trying to find their place in the world. What makes it impressive is the way the author piles on detail after detail, building real intensity – for example, when he describes Zou Lei’s long and delirious night walk from Queens to Great Neck. There are also remarkable passages depicting the mess and clutter of city life, the food people eat, and the impersonal vastness of a huge city in a huge country that doesn’t care if you live or die.
And while the book builds slowly, it becomes compulsively readable from the moment that its two main plot strands start to converge. By the end I was absolutely transfixed, even though it’s such a damning indictment of modern life that it’s painful to read.
No comments:
Post a Comment