A Comrade Lost & Found by Jan Wong

Well, talk about giving away the entire plotline in the title, including the ending: Jan Wong is obviously not a suspense writer.  And her titles, like “from Mao to Now” are complete kitsch.  But, hey, it’s just envy on my part that she’s got a marketable niche experience and I’d flaunt it if I had something a mass market craved, not like: early 60’s COBOL programming?, or early 70’s San Francisco dress fashions??, or even early 80’s West Coast Chess Tournaments???. 

What we have here is a tourist guidebook to China from a credible source, at the time it was really needed, 2007, just before the 2008 Summer Olympics.  Jan Wong works all her knowledge and research into the flattest, most boring plotline we’ve had as a Library Discussion book in the past ten years.  Yes, we’ve hit a new low-water mark.

Her experience as a journalist (retired journalists seem to have an inside track on book group selections), but also as a student, and as a Chinese Westerner made her a must-read: for those going to China (in 2007.)  Five years later, however, the bulk of her “currency” has disappated.  The politics have changed, the culture has changed, and things have probably changed physically as well.  What we, as Library readers are left with is an out-of-date guidebook with a bland storyline that inspires no bonding of any sort with the characters.  It’s a boring read.  Her technique is fine, as it should be, Wong being a successful journalist.  But reading this as a memoir!!, well, you can only take so many of, “we went to building 36 on the west side”, “then we ate at building XYZ, which is now called FGH”.

Now I’m not recommending the book, but Wong successively avoided one of the pitfalls of this sort of book, using too many foreign words and expressions.  My guess would be that she tosses in one expression every three pages.  That’s under a hundred for the book.  There’s never any need for foreign expressions, at all.  We’re not trying to learn Mandarin phonetically; and like Chinese food, we’ll have forgotten all the expressions by five o’clock tonight.  I guess the authors that do this sort of thing, think they’re boosting their credibility, and maybe they are.  Maybe those Absolut swilling, New York book club critics use a score card that gives points for foreign words.  In our case, the currency of the book in 2007 outweighed the blandness of the writing, so the critics were right, in 2007.  The Sonoma County Library, however, put a stinker on the list by ignoring the necessity for timeliness with travel books.

Maybe this is my season for recommending systemic changes, so I’m going to suggest we try compiling a ratings scorecard for future library book of the month club selections.  I suggest that when we give our comments, we each give the book a number, from 1 to 10:

1 – rotten, one of the three worst books I’ve read this past year

3 – a boring book that I couldn’t get into, wouldn’t recommend

6 – not a great book, but I did read it and might recommend it to friends

10 – one of the best books I’ve read this past year.

I would give “Comrade” a three.