Losing Plum Blossom Eleanor Morris Wu Books
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A love story set in the Far East, a Vietnam war widow falls in love with a half Japanese, half Taiwanese doctor with a troubled background. Set in the vibrant pub scene of the early 1990's in Taipei, an array of scurilous and unforgettable characters is portrayed who shepherd the American war widow through her doomed affair.
Losing Plum Blossom Eleanor Morris Wu Books
A scribe by vocation, I am indignant at the lack of manuscript help accorded this author on the occasion of her first novel. For whatever reasons (Chinese-language typists?) the bulky manuscript went to press before it was ready, with resulting quality control problems that may cause some purchasers of the book to feel cheated once they start reading.Even so, hardy readers - especially those with an interest in the Pacific Rim - might find "Losing Plum Blossom" worth a go. Certainly it is original in significant respects. How many English language novels have we seen set in Taiwan, a fascinating place that few Americans understand even though it is deeply mixed up in their country's business? Here and there in this novel one can find valuable descriptions of the island that will be instantly recognized by any foreigner who has worked and lived here.
Moreover the author, who was trained in anthropology, provides a total package of culture, history, psychology, religion, economics, politics, sex, cuisine, and much else besides for each of her major characters. I can't think of another novelist who tries so deliberately to do this, especially in such a polyglot setting of Taiwanese, Mainland Chinese, North Americans, Europeans and Japanese, all interacting from respective defensive cultural zones. Have you ever wondered what goes on inside the head of a half-Taiwanese, half-Japanese adult male buggered as a child by marauding Chinese soldiers when they took back the island after World War II from the Japanese? Probably you have not wondered about it, but read this book anyway for insights.
The author is original, too, in creating as her central character a middle aged American widow, around whom various priappic males buzz and fly. Some of these benighted men are Asian, some are Western, some are gay or bisexual, some are straight. More than one of them is a spy.
As mentioned, there are problems with the manuscript. It's a shame, because many of the problems could have been solved by diligent editing. For example, some of the more stilted dialogue could have been converted to indirect quotation. Piled up sentences could have been stripped of redundancies and given rhythms more pleasing to the reader. Whacked-out characters such as the Rambo wannabe Arthur Pennington could have been forestalled from impugning without challenge the character and record of Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, of WW II fame in Burma and China. The pace of the narrative could have been speeded up at the beginning, sparing us a terminal chop at the end with the need of a sequel to the novel. But I runneth ahead of the edition that has now appeared!
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Losing Plum Blossom Eleanor Morris Wu Books Reviews
LOSING PLUM BLOSSOM offers a multitude of insights into Oriental charisma, obsessions with purity of bloodlines, as well as intrigue & religion, their attitude about gaijin - Westerners/foreigners, & love itself!
Rebeccasreads recommends LOSING PLUM BLOSSOM as an epic saga of passionate & lengthy prose of the lives & thoughts of one woman & two men, as well as a superb glimpse into the history of Taiwan few readers in the world have yet heard from the Ching dynasty, through Japanese colonialism to Nationalist rule & its Golden Age in the 1960s & 70s.
Losing Plum Blossom, by Eleanor B. Morris Wu, is a novel set in Taiwan in the last decade or two of the 20th century. Based simply on the title and the setting as discerned from the back cover, I would never have bought this book or read it had I not already been acquainted with the author.
Having lived in Taiwan for 20 years, I am skeptical of novels about Asia written by Western authors sitting in apartments in New York City or ranchettes in California. Such works, especially in the action-adventure genre, are often stilted and tend to weave a web of mystery and complexity (inscrutable to the mere Western mind) around Asian cultures that is more a product of the authors¡¦ imagination and inexperience than a reflection of reality. Novels by Eric von Lustbader and William Arnold (China Gate, another novel about Taiwan) come to mind.
However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Losing Plum Blossom was different. Eleanor B. Morris Wu is an educator trained in anthropology and linguistics who has lived in Taiwan for many years. Consequently, her feeling for the physical and cultural setting in its reality provides a more convincing and believable backdrop for the dramatic action of her novel.
The novel is a freewheeling mixture of psychological drama and action-adventure involving the complex (but humanly comprehensible) interactions of an aging and neurotic Vietnam war widow, a meddling and not-so-celibate Jesuit priest (essential to any novel set in Asia), a brilliant but psychotic Taiwanese-Japanese doctor, an aging American war hero and entrepreneur, and miscellaneous prostitutes, terrorists, and spies. The drama revolves around sexual fixation, espionage, religious angst (Buddhist and Christian), and miscellaneous political intrigues.
None of the characters are particularly admirable, which makes the whole novel more palatable to me (I hate perfect people). I could never figure out why the war widow didn¡¦t just go back to the States and enjoy her VA benefits instead of being miserable in Taiwan (however, having lived in Taiwan, I realize that most long-term foreign residents aren¡¦t happy unless they¡¦re unhappy). I thought that the aging American entrepreneur needed some kind of negative-Viagra prescription. None of the women he heatedly pursued were worth walking across the room for, and he could have saved himself lot of grief and money if he¡¦d kept his fly zipped up.
A technical defect of the novel is a lack of editing prior to publication. There are quite a few grammatical errors, serpentine sentence constructions, redundancies, and mistranslations of Chinese names that could have been remedied with decent editorial attention. I thought the chapters were too long and could have been subdivided for the convenience of readers who like to finish a chapter before they put the book down for the evening.
Nevertheless, Losing Plum Blossom is unique and is worth reading, especially if one is interested in or has spent time in East Asia. I look forward to the novel in the proposed series!
A scribe by vocation, I am indignant at the lack of manuscript help accorded this author on the occasion of her first novel. For whatever reasons (Chinese-language typists?) the bulky manuscript went to press before it was ready, with resulting quality control problems that may cause some purchasers of the book to feel cheated once they start reading.
Even so, hardy readers - especially those with an interest in the Pacific Rim - might find "Losing Plum Blossom" worth a go. Certainly it is original in significant respects. How many English language novels have we seen set in Taiwan, a fascinating place that few Americans understand even though it is deeply mixed up in their country's business? Here and there in this novel one can find valuable descriptions of the island that will be instantly recognized by any foreigner who has worked and lived here.
Moreover the author, who was trained in anthropology, provides a total package of culture, history, psychology, religion, economics, politics, sex, cuisine, and much else besides for each of her major characters. I can't think of another novelist who tries so deliberately to do this, especially in such a polyglot setting of Taiwanese, Mainland Chinese, North Americans, Europeans and Japanese, all interacting from respective defensive cultural zones. Have you ever wondered what goes on inside the head of a half-Taiwanese, half-Japanese adult male buggered as a child by marauding Chinese soldiers when they took back the island after World War II from the Japanese? Probably you have not wondered about it, but read this book anyway for insights.
The author is original, too, in creating as her central character a middle aged American widow, around whom various priappic males buzz and fly. Some of these benighted men are Asian, some are Western, some are gay or bisexual, some are straight. More than one of them is a spy.
As mentioned, there are problems with the manuscript. It's a shame, because many of the problems could have been solved by diligent editing. For example, some of the more stilted dialogue could have been converted to indirect quotation. Piled up sentences could have been stripped of redundancies and given rhythms more pleasing to the reader. Whacked-out characters such as the Rambo wannabe Arthur Pennington could have been forestalled from impugning without challenge the character and record of Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, of WW II fame in Burma and China. The pace of the narrative could have been speeded up at the beginning, sparing us a terminal chop at the end with the need of a sequel to the novel. But I runneth ahead of the edition that has now appeared!
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