From Publishers Weekly
Chinese novelist Mian Mian's American debut offers readers a vicarious journey to a place and time shrouded in mystery: gritty, underground China of the late 1980s through mid-1990s. The story begins in Shanghai, when a classmate's suicide prompts narrator Hong to drop out of high school. Fearing she'll never get a job without an education, Hong heads south to the Special Economic Zone, where the government has lifted restrictions so business can flourish. Among the most successful enterprises are nightclubs, gambling, drugs and prostitution. Hong falls in love with a musician and quickly succumbs to an endless nightlife of sex and drugs and all the problems that tend to accompany such fun. Mian doesn't shy away from the ugliness of this world-alcoholism, drug addiction and AIDS cases abound-but her perceptive, compassionate writing turns Hong's raw experiences into something beautiful. Hong's frequent self-analysis feels honest, unpretentious and believably adolescent; Mian never lets us forget that for all her grim, worldly experience, Hong is still touchingly young and exuberant: "My mood was like my lover's hair. Love, for me, was partly a mood, just like that ultradopey bullshit music that I sometimes liked to listen to. That kind of music made me jumpy, but when I felt tense, I felt happy." Though the prose is uneven, sometimes straining awkwardly for lyrical effect, readers will find Hong a compelling personality.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
An international literary phenomenon-now available for the first time in English translation-Candy is a hip, harrowing tale of risk and desire, the story of a young Chinese woman forging a life for herself in a world seemingly devoid of guidelines. Hong, who narrates the novel, and whose life in many ways parallels the author's own, drops out of high school and runs away at age 17 to the frontier city of Shenzen. As Hong navigates the temptations of the city, she quickly falls in love with a young musician and together they dive into a cruel netherworld of alcohol, drugs, and excess, a life that fails to satisfy Hong's craving for an authentic self, and for a love that will define her. This startling and subversive novel is a blast of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll that opens up to us a modern China we've never seen before. - Banned in China-with Mian Mian labeled the 'poster child for spiritual pollution'-CANDY still managed to sell 60,000 copies, as well as countless additional copies in pirated editions. - CANDY has been published in eight countries to date and has become a bestseller in France.
