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oz2021's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Blood
Minor: Child death and Car accident
rebcamuse's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
What a very beautiful and disturbing book. It is not dystopic in a clichéd sort of way and the writing is poetry. It is memoir (fictional, yes, but memoir all the same). It is speculative fiction. Eunice Wong's reading is perfection, with just the right amount of gravitas with an equanimity that helps us understand (hear her talk about it here). What is sensuous in food and in life becomes ethically blurry when most of the world is overtaken by a smog of debatable origin and the protagonist, a former cook, goes to work for a mysterious employer on a mountain in Italy, above the smog (and above the rules of living below, it would seem). Privilege is redefined and reframed, disguised as innovation.
The imagery and descriptive writing is phenomenal. Zhang is deliberate in linking language across the story: the "calculus of loss" becomes the "connoisseurship of loss"--a subtle juxtaposition spaced several chapters apart, easy to miss. Metaphors abound: "...as I would not serve bitter greens without the consolation of oil, I began to keep back my less palatable feelings..." The insights, too, are plentiful: "Across the years it is hard to make out this version of myself, so blinkered by ambition that she sprinted through thirty years without asking, why?"
It was a slower "read" for me than I anticipated, but there is, forgive me, much to chew upon.
The imagery and descriptive writing is phenomenal. Zhang is deliberate in linking language across the story: the "calculus of loss" becomes the "connoisseurship of loss"--a subtle juxtaposition spaced several chapters apart, easy to miss. Metaphors abound: "...as I would not serve bitter greens without the consolation of oil, I began to keep back my less palatable feelings..." The insights, too, are plentiful: "Across the years it is hard to make out this version of myself, so blinkered by ambition that she sprinted through thirty years without asking, why?"
It was a slower "read" for me than I anticipated, but there is, forgive me, much to chew upon.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Sexual content, and Violence
Moderate: Child death
fkshg8465's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Such a strange story! Oddly (appropriately) enjoyable.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body shaming, Bullying, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Blood, Death of parent, Gaslighting, Abandonment, and Alcohol
pipettesandpages's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death and Blood
Moderate: Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Physical abuse, and Xenophobia
jfin54's review against another edition
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Gore, Physical abuse, Racism, Violence, Vomit, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail
brotestantethic's review against another edition
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Triumphant and breathtaking. Zhang creates her own intoxicating language of food and sex, one in which protagonist and reader are hazed and obscured from the dark underpinnings of “the mountain.” This language does truthfully make some sections of the novel hard to follow. There are depths of metaphors, but even if you only glean a couple central themes, you will be better off for it. What resonated best with me were the themes of power, venture capitalism, eco-fascism, and the sameness inside women.
Only the ending made me rate this book slightly lower than five stars.The protagonist idolizes Aida, her love interest, and it’s unclear why. She treats her as if she is completely innocent and acting under her father’s hand. I was really thrown off by this, and I think the impact would have been stronger had the narrator’s feelings been different. Furthermore, the ending is a bit too optimistic for me. The world improves almost completely. This is another case where, if the ending had been more dire, the book might have been more impactful.
Only the ending made me rate this book slightly lower than five stars.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcoholism and Child death
christienana's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Violence, Medical content, Abandonment, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic
Moderate: Alcoholism, Eating disorder, Mental illness, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Body shaming, Confinement, Death of parent, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Dysphoria, and Pandemic/Epidemic
ukponge's review against another edition
challenging
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence and Classism
Moderate: Animal death, Child death, Death of parent, and Pregnancy
bookishmillennial's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial
This book follows a nameless Chinese American narrator who is stranded in London and accepts a job in a billionaire's compound, a mountaintop area in Italy which is accessible to sunlight and is populated by extremely wealthy folks who bought their way in. It's an interesting enough premise, though the first half of this book's narrative is incredibly slow-paced, so buckle up!
There were so many topics explored in this (climate change, socioeconomic status, greed, famine), butI do wish the author went just a tiny bit deeper to make more of a commentary on them! Gosh, this is such a bummer for me because this has such incredibly gorgeous and unique prose, and I loved the sensual experience of reading this book (I was *hungry* lol). However, I just don't know that this book distinctly delivered any message or answered any question that it intended to.
I will absolutely read more from C Pam Zhang in the future, because the writing was absolutely stunning! I liked parts of this, and could appreciate the mirrors to our current societal letdowns and mishaps, but this was just fine to me.
Quotations that stood out to me:
This book follows a nameless Chinese American narrator who is stranded in London and accepts a job in a billionaire's compound, a mountaintop area in Italy which is accessible to sunlight and is populated by extremely wealthy folks who bought their way in. It's an interesting enough premise, though the first half of this book's narrative is incredibly slow-paced, so buckle up!
There were so many topics explored in this (climate change, socioeconomic status, greed, famine), butI do wish the author went just a tiny bit deeper to make more of a commentary on them! Gosh, this is such a bummer for me because this has such incredibly gorgeous and unique prose, and I loved the sensual experience of reading this book (I was *hungry* lol). However, I just don't know that this book distinctly delivered any message or answered any question that it intended to.
I will absolutely read more from C Pam Zhang in the future, because the writing was absolutely stunning! I liked parts of this, and could appreciate the mirrors to our current societal letdowns and mishaps, but this was just fine to me.
Quotations that stood out to me:
“How can I describe my life in the years leading up to this moment except in shades of gray? All the scrape and grind of it, all the empty shelves and lost ambition, all the soot grown hard on windows, season after season the only black harvest. The bad news, the debts, the visa applications, the flesh of your arm humping white between a nurse's fingers as she stuck you with a paltry twelve months' protection against whatever new strain of disease, as if bankruptcy or homelessness or a weariness at aping at the motions of life weren't more likely to kill you first.”
“I refused to be stuck. In Pasaje, California. In the smallness of my mother's life. In a fixed notion of my cooking, my abilities, my worth as ascribed to my Chineseness my Asianness my smallness my womanness my perpetual foreignness--myself.”
“Fear fueled a country so intent on perfection that they would give up the world.”
“We all die. We have only the choice, if we are privileged, of whether death comes with a whimper or a bang; of what worlds we taste before we go.”
“What sustains in the end are doomed romances, and nicotine, and crappy peanut butter, damn the additives and cholesterol because life is finite and not all nourishment can be measured.”
“Religion is a flimsy construction of rituals infused with arbitrary power. The gestures have always been empty; behind them stand hustlers no different from you. All that is required is a convincing performance.”
“You believe in a country that does not exist as you imagine it, in a code of morality as fanciful as any creation myth. What do you call that if not blind faith?”
“We shouldn’t be forced to choose at all. The fury in Aida’s voice was familiar. Nostalgic. I’d once possessed that strain of fury, as had my fellow cooks, my friends, my produce guy, a virulent rage against our tainted inheritance of this stupid, smog-choked planet. But it couldn’t last. We’d been inoculated from rage by other, more immediate concerns. For example: how to pay rent, how to stay alive. Aida, rich as she was, hadn’t been forced to choose between anger and dinner. For the first time in years, I tasted, through her, that feeling.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Racism, and Classism
Moderate: Child death, Physical abuse, Car accident, and Death of parent
wormgirl's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, and Sexual content
Minor: Body shaming, Child death, Sexual assault, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Pregnancy, and Classism