"Sexuality has never been a problem with me. My problem is different. I am a fragment in a fragmented age." Despite this claim, the protagonist of Ran's unusual coming-of-age novel is defined by her precocious beauty and her struggle to define her sexual identity. Ran, one of China's most acclaimed contemporary women writers, tells how lovely Ni Niuniu is seduced before she enters puberty by an older woman, the sly, wise Widow Ho, then falls into an unwanted affair with her male teacher, Ti. In college, she meets the love of her life, a fellow student named Yin Nan, but their brief, passionate affair ends abruptly when Yin Nan becomes involved in the student protests in Tiananmen Square. Traumatized by the loss of Yin Nan and the deaths of her mother and Widow Ho, Niuniu retreats into her own mind, becoming Miss Nothing ("I no longer exist... I have disappeared..."). Niuniu's flaws, foibles and idiosyncrasies represent fertile ground for Chen's wide-ranging psychological character study. Even the more conventional scenes are narrated with lyrical intensity, and hallucinatory dream sequences and passages describing Niuniu's alienation range from the revelatory to the overwrought. The result is an uneven but intriguing novel that captures the heightened sensibility of a woman who flees the bustling contemporary world for the sensual pleasures of inner space. (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
The inner life of a highly passive heroine, as seen against the turbulence of her country's recent past-in a first English translation from an acclaimed Chinese writer. Ni Niuniu first appears as an adult woman who has secluded herself in a carefully groomed garden, eschewing contact with others and pursuing the purity of her musings and making small personal drawings. As if to explain the enigma of herself, Ni tells us that when she was a small girl in a sturdily "dysfunctional" family, her father was emotionally remote and sometimes violent, while her mother lovingly nourished her daughter's heart and soul. In grade school, Ni suffers the torments of Mr. Ti, who will first molest her and then declare his unfettered love during an exotic dinner. But at this stage Ni's primary sensual interests are in women, their breasts and softness, which are offered to her tenderly by, among others, her girlhood friend Yi Qui and neighbor Ho. The erotic encounter with Mr. Ti introduces her not only to the sexuality of men but to lust as well: an experience she rather enjoys. As she reaches college, she befriends Yin Nan, and, during the years up to and preceding Tian'anmen Square, she's suffers through a handful of traumas. Her mother dies of heart disease; beloved Ho dies in an apartment fire; and her first authentic love, with Yin Nan, is quickly concluded with his escape from China to Germany. While Howard-Gibbon's translation is smooth and readable, there remains, perhaps from the original, an allusive poeticism that lends the prose a kind of indistinct, hazy generality-a haziness that, conjoined here with Ni's already poetic spirit, deprives her character of sharp definition. Still, thepersisting reader will find her insights and aphorisms engaging and occasionally provocative. An intriguing exploration of the contemporary consciousness of an alienated, urban Chinese woman for whom current history matters less than the reliable comforts of love, nature, and solitude.
This polished and readable translation of the inaugural novel of Chen Ran stands as an example of the quasi-autobiographical Sino-Japanese shishosetsu
An atmospheric story of sexual awakening and ennui that enlarges our understanding of modern China.
In the novelA Private Life, Ran Chen immerses us in the troubled life of Ni Niuniu... Chen weaves together these evaluations with Niuniu's manic writings in order to create an ultra postmodern tale of a young woman's psychosocial evolution.... an important portrait of a young woman trying to survive in a complicated world.
The turbulent decades spanning the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the deadly demonstrations at Tiananmen Square provide the backdrop for this sensuous, coming-of-age tale by Chinese essayist and short-story writer Chen.... Chen's first work to be translated into English provides an eloquent examination of the quest for calm in a chaotic world.
Chen Ran's strikingly introspective, subjective, and individualized writing sets her work distinctively apart for the traditional and mainstream realism of the majority of contemporary Chinese writers.... In his translation, Howard-Gibbon adeptly conveys the exquisiteness, richness, and slight eccentricity of Chen's prose.
A riveting tale... a lyrical meditation on memory, sexuality, femininity, and the often arbitrary distinctions between madness and sanity.
The turbulent decades spanning the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the deadly demonstrations at Tiananmen Square provide the backdrop for this sensuous, coming-of-age tale by Chinese essayist and short-story writer Chen.... Chen's first work to be translated into English provides an eloquent examination of the quest for calm in a chaotic world.
A Private Life is not an overtly political book; rather, it has the timeless quality of most dreams. Still, [narrator] Ni Niuniu's refusal to connect with the world outside her door becomes a kind of political statement.
— Elizabeth Gold
