This is the second time I checked it out of the local library, and this time, I finished reading it, within a week. It is surprisingly very easy to read for me, probably because Ken Liu, who moved to the US at 11 years old from China, draws heavy inspirations from the Chinese culture in some of his short stories in this collection. He is a fascinating story teller. I am particularly impressed by State Change (charming story, but why on earth didn’t she carry more ice cubes?!), Good Hunting (which I read has been adapted, deservedly, into a short film), The Literomancer (a bit too forcing on the reading of Chinese characters, but what a tragic twist of destiny!), The Paper Menagerie (the letter from the mom at the end is a bit too melodramatic but it perfectly succeeds in inducing tears to roll down my cheeks), and The Perfect Match (did I just write about the sci-fi romance film Her?)
Ken Liu possesses a very interesting background of culture and career, so I doubt if he would ever run out of inspirations for stories short or long. I cannot help comparing his work with the last book of short stories that I read: “Dear Life” by Alice Munro, and it’s very unfair to do so I admit. Liu is a very good craftsman, while Munro is an effortless artist. You read great stories, and bit of history in Liu’s words, but you see lively individuals in Munro’s stories, flesh and soul.
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I cannot recall when was the last time when I finished a book of fiction within one week. Certainly not since I got any child. Dear Life - a collection of short stories by the Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro - certainly made my time well spent. Actually it made me almost feel like an intellectual again, if I was ever one before. I did remember that I was assigned to read one of the stories about 18 years ago by the teacher of English Literature, who was an American novelist himself. “Gravel” was the name of that story, and probably the only one that has the slightest association with the complications of man-woman relationships, though it’s tempting to think that the death of the sister, which is the whole thing about this story, is due to a man-woman relationship. But that was still the safest choice of our teacher for a group of Chinese kids who just turned 20 and mostly didn’t have any experiences or insights into man-woman relationships. I mean now at the age of 36, I feel that I am just starting to understand or guess around the feelings and emotions in those short stories. “No other author can tell quite so much with so little”, I cannot agree more with what Chicago Tribune wrote about Munro. I would argue further that she didn’t even tell that much, but left so much space for you to think, to feel. When I am bored, almost insulted sometimes, by films that are trying so hard to reveal so much about so many things, it’s always a good idea to read a short story by Munro.
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