飞行家/The Aviator by 双雪涛 (Shuang Xuetao)

AUTHOR: 双雪涛 (Shuang Xuetao)

GENRE: FICTION

ISBN: 9787549599349

RELEASE DATE: Aug 1, 2017

PAGES: 307 PAGES

WRITTEN LANGUAGE: CHINESE (SIMPLIFIED)

EDITION LANGUAGE: CHINESE (SIMPLIFIED)

★★

双雪涛 (Shuang Xuetao), one of my most anticipated Chinese writers to read, the winner of multiple literary prizes, whose book has been adapted into movies and TV shows, is, unfortunately, writing “dude literature”. A concept that I just made up, inspired by my friend Nicole, to describe books that are written by cis men where women are all sexualized and are often a way to highlight how great the men are in the story. One iconic figure of this concept is Murakami Haruki.

I was as disappointed with this short story collection as it was praised.

A lot of the stories are set in North-East China. The characters’ lives are damaged by violence from others, stuck in some situations that are out of control, and are failed by their career choices, etc.

One thing I liked about this book is it honestly presented you the people’s livelihood in North-East China, and the dilemma that people had with the decay of the local economy after long and strong prosperity.

However, a lot of the stories are forcefully twisted and very unnatural. The tone of the book is dark but lacks the meanings to support the darkness.

The narratives are condescending and are not aesthetic at all. The language choices are vulgar without purpose. There are many ways to present people’s daily life unrefinedly with better word choices. It’s not a showing of style, it’s a showing of the literary incompetence of the author. Especially I read Chi Ta-wei the same month and fell in love with the beautiful sentence to sentence writing that the latter has.

And I don’t even want to talk about the character development in the book. Many characters fall flat. The female characters are often sexualized, young and old. The whole book was filled with uninvited hormones. If not sexualized, women have a serving role to take care of others, instead of being their own selves.

Overall, this is not a delightful reading experience, and I would avoid 双雪涛 (Shuang Xuetao)’s works in the future.