Reviews and Comments

This book had a really dramatic fall off for me. For the first couple chapters I was super into it, partly because it did that way of laying out a debate I can sort of situate myself in but don't entirely understand the history of (the debate about the role of imperialism in the birth of capitalism), and then making the opposite camp's argument (capitalism came about due to class relations internal to England, and only after developed imperialism) very compelling.

But then it fell off for me pretty hard, because it seems she has a very pure idea of what capitalism is that is in her brain but not very much given to us and then historical examples are tested against it. When she starts saying the Dutch Republic not being capitalist because so much of their wealth was buying basic necessities from eastern europe where labour was cheaper, it was really like "i think the same argument would apply to the only form of capitalism I have ever been alive for". It just becomes a bit tautological: capitalism originated in England, because before that there was no economic system that looked like what began happening in England in the 17th century.

Which ended up reinforcing my previous tendencies, instincts, in associating the "birth in england then spreading outward from there" crowd with the abstracted models of Marx's Capital rather than actual history, where a pure capitalism never appears.

Glad I read it. If you want a very readable summary of academic Marxist debates about how capitalism originated, it's first section is very good for that.

This book was hard to read! Predictable, since it's mostly about a parent grieving the loss of a child who chose to die. But also, being a book about a Chinese immigrant to the u.s. writer whose son killed himself at 16, written by a Chinese immigrant to the u.s. writer whose son killed himself at 16, made it all the more difficult to read. Since Li is quite explicit about it being a novel, I found myself constantly wondering what was fictional, if anything beyond the basic conceit: the book takes place entirely in the mind of the mother, who maintains a conversation with her now dead son, with the conversation being the bulk of the text of the book. That is, I assume that Li didn't maintain this kind of formal conversation for months following her son's death, other than in the form of writing the novel, but is anything beyond that fictional? I found myself wondering if any of the details of the author/son and character/son dyads were changed. In some sense how could they be? How could you write something so clearly personal, so intensely grounded, but then choose to change the instrument the son played, or his personality, or what age he first read War and Peace? So I found myself somewhat distracted with these kinds of questions.

I also think I was hoping for that kind of hauntingly beautiful melancholy vibe and this was mostly not that. For better and for worse. Frankly, spending time in this grieving mother's head sucks, and not in the kind of romanticized sadness that exists to push emotional buttons, like most horror movies exist to push our fear button in a safe circumstances. I think it's more honest, but also less enjoyable. Which it should be? But why do we read novels?

One of the main way this manifests -- and in some sense this may be "spoiler-y" but only in the sense of having someone else's opinion in your head before you have to info to form your own: there is essentially no plot -- is that i found the son to be deeply unlikeable. While being unenjoyable, this also felt more honest -- not that I have the relevant loss-of-child experience -- to how the voice of a teenage intellectual would appear in the mind of the mother who he chose to have outlive him. He is constantly criticizing her, her word choices, metaphors, thoughts, actions. We're never given any sense that the mother character finds him unlikeable or out of line, and I'm not sure any of this was the author's intention (I'd guess the opposite, but who knows), but it comes across so strongly. Only at the point where I was reminding myself that this was a voice in the head of the mother and not a character really, was I able to relax a bit. Before that it felt like we had one character and one cardboard cut-out of an unbearable, eye-rolling, superior teen we were supposed to be pretending was: a) a full character, and b) someone we, the readers, could ourselves come to mourn.

Star rating this feels a bit arbitrary. Li yiyun is a fabulous writer. This is my second book of hers, and the second time I come very impressed with her as a writer but not entirely in love with the book as a whole. (The other was the Vagrants and my discomfort is more with English language works that portray China as a horrorshow in general -- even though there is plenty of horror, to be sure! -- than with Li's novel in particular). I guess my take-away message is "i'm glad I read it but I didn't like it"? Or vice versa? Or "it's good; don't read it"?

Summary: part of a broad shift in the political economy of canada post-wwii (automobiles > trains, us > britain, toronto > montreal, etc.) both began in the 30s and was characterized by cultural shifts in the bourgeoisie, because the National Policy capitalists were not politically or socially equipped to deal with the interwar crises. capitalists that were instead more open to state intervention (or different forms of it), more meritocratic than aristocratic in style, and more oriented to the u.s. than britain in culture, politics, and business took the reins. this is mainly illustrated by chapter-length bios of fat cats (which I found mind-numbing), but there is increasingly other content - e.g. lots about workers' resistance in oshawa auto plants in the 30s - as the book goes on.

i barely even "grad school"-style read this, mainly because part I is so soul-crushingly boring and I was unclear what argument was being made. It became clearer and more interesting in the second half, but by then i was on study group deadline to "finish" it quick.

i would suggest maybe reading the conclusion, which is short and quick and clear, and if you want to read the rest from there, you'll have a better sense of what the point is.