THIS IS A BOOK REVIEW I EDITED, CO-WROTE FOR OUR APRIL 2007 EDITION.
BOOK
Zhu Wen’s Women
Zhu Wen may have a background in electrical engineering, but in “Look at Women,” he’s trying to determine how the other half is wired.
In this collection of eight autobiographically based fiction stories, some women flame into Zhu’s life, while others steal into it as dull yet throbbing currents. No matter what the conduit, each woman charges his philosophy and world view.
The stories quietly elucidate the feelings women invoke in men. In I Love U.S. Dollars, Zhu Wen sits with his elderly father on the road watching the girls go by. Equally moved by beauty and the tragic loss of longing, his father weeps. In Look at Women, Zhu describes how a mixed-blooded Harbin girl melts his heart as their southbound train passes from snowy tundra to lush valleys.
This restrained desire lends intensity to the work and demonstrates Zhu’s increasing interest in the understated emotions and static instances that define our most poignant moments of being.
He best documents the heart’s thick bump in the book’s final story, Thank You Poker. When the author runs into his unrequited love at the elevator: “That girl didn’t get in. The doors closed. The lift descended.” The novel thus crackles to its end.
–By Jack Jiang and Megan Shank
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