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Snow and Shadow
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"The bizarre tales of sexual exploitation, family dynamics and intimate relationships present a charming and vividly magical world. A dreamlike quality pervades these pages, as we accept such strange and disturbing imagery in each story, then slip into another alternate reality that is just as odd. Tse envelops her readers in obscurity through bold, imaginative and artfully spare prose. ...[T]his enchanting collection of transformative tales will, like a shadow, follow [readers] long after the final page."
- Amy Russell, South China Morning Post
“By turns playful and melancholy, Dorothy Tse’s tales never fail to mesmerize: they are wonderfully assured, and genuinely strange.”
- Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Madeleine Is Sleeping
“Like the incongruous nouns cohabiting in her collection’s title, the human inmates of Dorothy Tse’s Snow and Shadow achieve an impossible intimacy made up of dismembering and transfiguring events. Here, the body is not so much a container for the soul as an area of vulnerability—a vulnerability which is amplified and transformed by contact with others into the material of wondrous events, both submolecular and world-sized. I’m stunned by the resolve, accomplishment, and strangeness of this vision. Tse joins the ranks of artists currently remaking the world, from Yoko Tawada to César Aira. Nicky Harman’s translations render Tse’s vision in an English at once self-contained and ripe with toxins, like radioactive fruit.”
- Joyelle McSweeney, author of Nylund, The Sarcographer
“These stories are not for the faint-hearted. Dorothy Tse’s fictional world is haunted by shadows of death and violence. Yet it is hauntingly beautiful. The characters live out their fate as if caught in a surrealistic fable. Then we realize that this world can be none other than Hong Kong. Nicky Harman’s fluent, colloquial translation is itself a masterful feat and captures the tone and color of the original taut prose to the teeth. An indelible reading experience.”
- Professor Leo Ou-fan Lee, author of Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China
Dorothy Tse's stories often start on a note of innocence, but an abrupt twist invariably brings us up short: dreamscapes descend and the pages become populated with ever-weirder characters. Strange occurrences are juxtaposed in ways that confound logical expectations. These stories are not for the faint-hearted—violence and sensuality abound. Limbs, even heads, are lopped off with regularity. Yet scenes can be so outrageous that we find ourselves laughing. Dorothy’s bold narrative experiments leave us alternately beguiled and deeply unsettled.
About the Author:
Dorothy Tse is one of Hong Kong’s most acclaimed young writers. Her short story collection 'So Black' won the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature in 2005 and 'A Dictionary of Two Cities', which she co-authored with Hon Lai-chu, won the 2013 Hong Kong Book Prize. Her literary prizes also include Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award and the Hong Kong Award for Creative Writing in Chinese. She was a resident at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in 2011. A co-founder of Hong Kong’s preeminent literary magazine, Fleurs des Lettres, she currently teaches creative writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.
About the Translator
Nicky Harman lives in the United Kingdom. She taught translation at Imperial College in London before becoming a full-time translator of Chinese literary works. She focuses on fiction, poetry and occasionally literary non-fiction.
"The bizarre tales of sexual exploitation, family dynamics and intimate relationships present a charming and vividly magical world. A dreamlike quality pervades these pages, as we accept such strange and disturbing imagery in each story, then slip into another alternate reality that is just as odd. Tse envelops her readers in obscurity through bold, imaginative and artfully spare prose. ...[T]his enchanting collection of transformative tales will, like a shadow, follow [readers] long after the final page."
- Amy Russell, South China Morning Post
“By turns playful and melancholy, Dorothy Tse’s tales never fail to mesmerize: they are wonderfully assured, and genuinely strange.”
- Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Madeleine Is Sleeping
“Like the incongruous nouns cohabiting in her collection’s title, the human inmates of Dorothy Tse’s Snow and Shadow achieve an impossible intimacy made up of dismembering and transfiguring events. Here, the body is not so much a container for the soul as an area of vulnerability—a vulnerability which is amplified and transformed by contact with others into the material of wondrous events, both submolecular and world-sized. I’m stunned by the resolve, accomplishment, and strangeness of this vision. Tse joins the ranks of artists currently remaking the world, from Yoko Tawada to César Aira. Nicky Harman’s translations render Tse’s vision in an English at once self-contained and ripe with toxins, like radioactive fruit.”
- Joyelle McSweeney, author of Nylund, The Sarcographer
“These stories are not for the faint-hearted. Dorothy Tse’s fictional world is haunted by shadows of death and violence. Yet it is hauntingly beautiful. The characters live out their fate as if caught in a surrealistic fable. Then we realize that this world can be none other than Hong Kong. Nicky Harman’s fluent, colloquial translation is itself a masterful feat and captures the tone and color of the original taut prose to the teeth. An indelible reading experience.”
- Professor Leo Ou-fan Lee, author of Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China
Dorothy Tse's stories often start on a note of innocence, but an abrupt twist invariably brings us up short: dreamscapes descend and the pages become populated with ever-weirder characters. Strange occurrences are juxtaposed in ways that confound logical expectations. These stories are not for the faint-hearted—violence and sensuality abound. Limbs, even heads, are lopped off with regularity. Yet scenes can be so outrageous that we find ourselves laughing. Dorothy’s bold narrative experiments leave us alternately beguiled and deeply unsettled.
About the Author:
Dorothy Tse is one of Hong Kong’s most acclaimed young writers. Her short story collection 'So Black' won the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature in 2005 and 'A Dictionary of Two Cities', which she co-authored with Hon Lai-chu, won the 2013 Hong Kong Book Prize. Her literary prizes also include Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award and the Hong Kong Award for Creative Writing in Chinese. She was a resident at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program in 2011. A co-founder of Hong Kong’s preeminent literary magazine, Fleurs des Lettres, she currently teaches creative writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.
About the Translator
Nicky Harman lives in the United Kingdom. She taught translation at Imperial College in London before becoming a full-time translator of Chinese literary works. She focuses on fiction, poetry and occasionally literary non-fiction.
212 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 1, 2014
7 people are currently reading
390 people want to read
About the author
Dorothy Tse
16 books36 followersDorothy Tse Hiu-hung (謝曉虹) is the author of four short story collections in Chinese, including So Black (《好黑》, 2005) and A Dictionary of Two Cities (《雙城辭典》, 2013). Translations of her short fiction have appeared in The Guardian, Paper Republic, The Margins (AAWW) and Anomaly. Her English-language collection Snow and Shadow (2014, trans. Nicky Harman), was longlisted for the University of Rochester’s 2015 Best Translated Book Award, and collects short stories from her earlier Chinese books as well as previously unpublished works.
A recipient of the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature and Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award, Tse also attended The University of Iowa's International Writing Program in 2011. She is a co-founder of the Hong Kong literary magazine Fleurs des lettres, and currently teaches literature and writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.
一九七七年生。
似乎一直在香港生活，但其實只是在有限的幾條街道上重複地走來走去，與固定的朋友互通消息，以及看各種虛幻的新聞。九七年開始寫作，作品收入大陸、台灣及香港等地之小說及散文選集，於○三年出版《好黑》（香港，青文）。
A recipient of the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature and Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award, Tse also attended The University of Iowa's International Writing Program in 2011. She is a co-founder of the Hong Kong literary magazine Fleurs des lettres, and currently teaches literature and writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.
一九七七年生。
似乎一直在香港生活，但其實只是在有限的幾條街道上重複地走來走去，與固定的朋友互通消息，以及看各種虛幻的新聞。九七年開始寫作，作品收入大陸、台灣及香港等地之小說及散文選集，於○三年出版《好黑》（香港，青文）。
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
August 21, 2021
Concerned about the current situation in Hong Kong I reached for a collection of short stories “Snow and Shadow” by Dorothy Tse, well known Hong Kong’s author. According to her “in Hong Kong, writing itself is an active rejection of utilitarian society and mundane everyday life” and I wanted to understand what Hong Kong’s citizens escape to, what writing they choose to forget about reality.
Tse’s stories are surreal dreamscapes, in which violence, Kafkaesque transformations (a wife transforming into a fish), repetitive motives of ghosts, amputation, abortion and alienation (like in the story about an apartment building, in which apartments constantly change place and residents risk never finding them again upon returning home) permeate. I adore oneirism and some of her stories reminded me slightly of Cortázar or Onetti. My favourite one, “The Traveling Family”, about a poor family leaving the house and going on a trip, during which all members leave the group one by one until the narrator, a young boy, is left alone, brought stories by Bruno Schulz and films like “Amarcord” by Fellini or “Kosmos” by Reha Erdem to mind. Tse’s talent lies in making her dreamscapes extremely cinematic - sometimes I felt I was reading about one vision after another, without logical flow, where reality blended with metaphysics and fantasy.
And this is what also frustrated me. Many of the stories are completely inconsequential - lacking substance to make me think or feel, leaving me quite bored and unmoved. She cannot depict the emotional state of her characters the way Kafka could. Tse’s language is in no way comparable to the polished beauty and grace of Schulz. Nor can Tse build tension and thrill a reader the way Borges or Cortázar did. There is not enough depth in her writing. With the exception of a handful of stories the majority, in my opinion, would benefit from rewriting them as they do have potential but are simply underdeveloped. There are a lot of great ideas on the pages of “Snow and Shadow” and some would work beautifully executed in short films (Apichatpong Weerasethakul or Tsai Ming-Liang would be perfect to work on them). But overall, “Snow and Shadow” disappoints.
Tse’s stories are surreal dreamscapes, in which violence, Kafkaesque transformations (a wife transforming into a fish), repetitive motives of ghosts, amputation, abortion and alienation (like in the story about an apartment building, in which apartments constantly change place and residents risk never finding them again upon returning home) permeate. I adore oneirism and some of her stories reminded me slightly of Cortázar or Onetti. My favourite one, “The Traveling Family”, about a poor family leaving the house and going on a trip, during which all members leave the group one by one until the narrator, a young boy, is left alone, brought stories by Bruno Schulz and films like “Amarcord” by Fellini or “Kosmos” by Reha Erdem to mind. Tse’s talent lies in making her dreamscapes extremely cinematic - sometimes I felt I was reading about one vision after another, without logical flow, where reality blended with metaphysics and fantasy.
And this is what also frustrated me. Many of the stories are completely inconsequential - lacking substance to make me think or feel, leaving me quite bored and unmoved. She cannot depict the emotional state of her characters the way Kafka could. Tse’s language is in no way comparable to the polished beauty and grace of Schulz. Nor can Tse build tension and thrill a reader the way Borges or Cortázar did. There is not enough depth in her writing. With the exception of a handful of stories the majority, in my opinion, would benefit from rewriting them as they do have potential but are simply underdeveloped. There are a lot of great ideas on the pages of “Snow and Shadow” and some would work beautifully executed in short films (Apichatpong Weerasethakul or Tsai Ming-Liang would be perfect to work on them). But overall, “Snow and Shadow” disappoints.
December 30, 2017
So as to not bury the lede: I LOVED this collection, and highly recommend it to anyone into surreal and strange short fiction. Far and away my favorite book read this year.
One of the best parts of getting invited to moderate a panel discussion at a convention or literary festival is encountering the work of writers you might not have ordinarily come across. Such was the case with Dorothy Tse, who appeared on one of my panels at the 2017 George Town Literary Festival.
Tse writes in Chinese and reads in Cantonese, and is highly regarded for her stories in her native Hong Kong. However, those of us who read in English have the extraordinary fortune to have Nicky Harman's lyrical translation of Snow and Shadow, an extraordinary collection of oneiric pieces that feel at home next to the best of Angela Carter and Kelly Link.
Tse draws from a deep well of dreamlike imagery and delightfully strange premises, such as men trading body parts for sexual favors, a father donating his head to his son when the young man's goes missing, an apartment block where the units never stay in the same location, and a wife slowly transforming into a fish. As well, the title story is the most remarkable retelling of Snow White since Neil Gaiman's "Snow Glass Apples".
Dorothy Tse's is a voice that deserves a wide and appreciative audience. However you can find this book, do so; you'll thank me.
One of the best parts of getting invited to moderate a panel discussion at a convention or literary festival is encountering the work of writers you might not have ordinarily come across. Such was the case with Dorothy Tse, who appeared on one of my panels at the 2017 George Town Literary Festival.
Tse writes in Chinese and reads in Cantonese, and is highly regarded for her stories in her native Hong Kong. However, those of us who read in English have the extraordinary fortune to have Nicky Harman's lyrical translation of Snow and Shadow, an extraordinary collection of oneiric pieces that feel at home next to the best of Angela Carter and Kelly Link.
Tse draws from a deep well of dreamlike imagery and delightfully strange premises, such as men trading body parts for sexual favors, a father donating his head to his son when the young man's goes missing, an apartment block where the units never stay in the same location, and a wife slowly transforming into a fish. As well, the title story is the most remarkable retelling of Snow White since Neil Gaiman's "Snow Glass Apples".
Dorothy Tse's is a voice that deserves a wide and appreciative audience. However you can find this book, do so; you'll thank me.
September 2, 2015
Received a copy via DeBartlo & Co.
2.5
The PR wheel has spun this collection as an example of a writing style akin to Murakami. The problem with this is two fold. Firstly, his work perfectly straddles reality and dreamscape. Secondly, because of item one, there is a consistency to his work, which lends to ease of reading and a clear(er...ish) understanding of the content. In this collection not so much.
The author of Snow and Shadow presented us with human experiences, cultural references, and personal reflection through the lens of heavy abstract writing. One of the more constant themes was this dark, edgy, and achingly beautiful discussion of loss and transitions.
Abstraction and surrealism are tricky buggers. This is where my interest was steadily squeezed. Rather than drift between two anchors of a continuum, reality and abstraction—a place where my Dearest Bender thrives—, the author remained cemented in the deep waters of abstraction and surrealism. While reading my brain was hit with a barrage of melting clocks and weirdly distorted faces tied like hot air balloons to desert landscapes(get this reference. Win a star). It recalled my initial confusion over Mulholland Drive, except in this case I doubt a reread would provide a deeper understanding.
But the words are something yummy!
“The morning sun was so warm that its rays leapt down into people’s collars like lively fleas.”
“Some sounds are lost forever. He will never hear his wife tapping on the computer again”
“People squeezed breathlessly through cracks in the city, eager to find a Christmas tree in the shopping mall, though it was only August”
And this. Have you ever heard rain described like this...!!!!!!!! “People looked up and the tight-shut overcast sky opened its toothless mouth, splattering their faces with rain. He opened his umbrella and the raindrops pelted down on it like deafening bullets”
Story after story is fanned with delicious literary delights. These are surgically placed with ease suggestive of a mature writer. They offer the brightness of bergamot, and the tenacity of an underdog. Weaved throughout is an air of leathery stiff dread and fear. These lines divorce themselves from the overall convoluted writing style and return the reader back to a place of familiarity. I fear that the power of these moments is a reflection of a book drowned by a disorienting style. Rather than contrast and balance the writing, they simply relieve the reader and give him/her a lifeboat; it has a hole in the bottom, and your 8-ounce cup will do nothing to prevent your inevitable drowning.
I did enjoy a few of these stories.
Woman Fish- This is an exploration of rifts between two lovers. Your boyfriend/girlfriend may not transform into a fish—Though maybe he/she will. It happened on South Park—but change does happen, and sometimes the strain is just too much.
The Love Between Leaf and Knife was a startling illustration of a lengthy marriage, the loss of intimacy, and the two lovers endless rush to prove their love. As they continue attempts to outdo one another, you get the unsettling sense that the loss they are attempting to escape will never recede.
Head is an interesting look at family roles. ‘Tree’ (IE Son) looses his head and ‘Wood’ (IE Dad) offers his own. ‘Tree’ struggles with the internal conflict of his former self, and his new external appearance. We later discover ‘Wood’s’ role in the frankenstein-esque exercise in role reversal, and question if this is an examination of a father passing on his legacy to an apprehensive son. Getting old sucks.
Blessed Bodies was another look at loss, and an examination of how far someone will go to seek pleasure and companionship, and the lengths someone will go to provide those things. It is also an analysis in the consequences of this recursive exchange.
‘The Mute Door” and “The Traveling Family” really encapsulate the saying, “Don't you know you can't go home again?”
In "The Mute Door" we start our descent into abstract concepts. Familiarity is something we yearn for, but life is earmarked with transitions, some we willingly engaged, and others are approached with uncertainty. This is a fierce and commanding exploration into balancing the two, and may explore the loss of culture, and/or the loss of love; I am still trying to figure that out.
"The Traveling Family" was a lovely, heartbreaking portrayal of change. Son, Sis, Dad, Mom and Grandmother embark on a trip. One by one each departs and finds his/her own purpose, a path of refuge and comfort, leaving Son totally and absolutely confused. He must establish his own trajectory in life, and forgo the urge to remain stagnant among the familiar. Is this an exploration of Son’s perception that the members of his micro-environment no longer complement his future self? Or the pressure others exact onto him to leave and flourish on his own? This is all retrospective too, so we get the sense that he has already established a sense of self, but what constitutes that self is as elusive as a half completed canvas and we don’t really get a sense of where all these events lead ‘Son’.
So, in the end I can appreciate the brilliant combination of a simple and complex writing style during those moments I was able to liberate myself from this Murakami on speed writing style, but those moments were so scarce that I was left feeling empty and uninspired. Dorothy Tse is clearly a writer worthy of attention, and anyone with the patience to wade into her stories will surely find himself or herself rewarded.
2.5
The PR wheel has spun this collection as an example of a writing style akin to Murakami. The problem with this is two fold. Firstly, his work perfectly straddles reality and dreamscape. Secondly, because of item one, there is a consistency to his work, which lends to ease of reading and a clear(er...ish) understanding of the content. In this collection not so much.
The author of Snow and Shadow presented us with human experiences, cultural references, and personal reflection through the lens of heavy abstract writing. One of the more constant themes was this dark, edgy, and achingly beautiful discussion of loss and transitions.
Abstraction and surrealism are tricky buggers. This is where my interest was steadily squeezed. Rather than drift between two anchors of a continuum, reality and abstraction—a place where my Dearest Bender thrives—, the author remained cemented in the deep waters of abstraction and surrealism. While reading my brain was hit with a barrage of melting clocks and weirdly distorted faces tied like hot air balloons to desert landscapes(get this reference. Win a star). It recalled my initial confusion over Mulholland Drive, except in this case I doubt a reread would provide a deeper understanding.
But the words are something yummy!
“The morning sun was so warm that its rays leapt down into people’s collars like lively fleas.”
“Some sounds are lost forever. He will never hear his wife tapping on the computer again”
“People squeezed breathlessly through cracks in the city, eager to find a Christmas tree in the shopping mall, though it was only August”
And this. Have you ever heard rain described like this...!!!!!!!! “People looked up and the tight-shut overcast sky opened its toothless mouth, splattering their faces with rain. He opened his umbrella and the raindrops pelted down on it like deafening bullets”
Story after story is fanned with delicious literary delights. These are surgically placed with ease suggestive of a mature writer. They offer the brightness of bergamot, and the tenacity of an underdog. Weaved throughout is an air of leathery stiff dread and fear. These lines divorce themselves from the overall convoluted writing style and return the reader back to a place of familiarity. I fear that the power of these moments is a reflection of a book drowned by a disorienting style. Rather than contrast and balance the writing, they simply relieve the reader and give him/her a lifeboat; it has a hole in the bottom, and your 8-ounce cup will do nothing to prevent your inevitable drowning.
I did enjoy a few of these stories.
Woman Fish- This is an exploration of rifts between two lovers. Your boyfriend/girlfriend may not transform into a fish—Though maybe he/she will. It happened on South Park—but change does happen, and sometimes the strain is just too much.
The Love Between Leaf and Knife was a startling illustration of a lengthy marriage, the loss of intimacy, and the two lovers endless rush to prove their love. As they continue attempts to outdo one another, you get the unsettling sense that the loss they are attempting to escape will never recede.
Head is an interesting look at family roles. ‘Tree’ (IE Son) looses his head and ‘Wood’ (IE Dad) offers his own. ‘Tree’ struggles with the internal conflict of his former self, and his new external appearance. We later discover ‘Wood’s’ role in the frankenstein-esque exercise in role reversal, and question if this is an examination of a father passing on his legacy to an apprehensive son. Getting old sucks.
Blessed Bodies was another look at loss, and an examination of how far someone will go to seek pleasure and companionship, and the lengths someone will go to provide those things. It is also an analysis in the consequences of this recursive exchange.
‘The Mute Door” and “The Traveling Family” really encapsulate the saying, “Don't you know you can't go home again?”
In "The Mute Door" we start our descent into abstract concepts. Familiarity is something we yearn for, but life is earmarked with transitions, some we willingly engaged, and others are approached with uncertainty. This is a fierce and commanding exploration into balancing the two, and may explore the loss of culture, and/or the loss of love; I am still trying to figure that out.
"The Traveling Family" was a lovely, heartbreaking portrayal of change. Son, Sis, Dad, Mom and Grandmother embark on a trip. One by one each departs and finds his/her own purpose, a path of refuge and comfort, leaving Son totally and absolutely confused. He must establish his own trajectory in life, and forgo the urge to remain stagnant among the familiar. Is this an exploration of Son’s perception that the members of his micro-environment no longer complement his future self? Or the pressure others exact onto him to leave and flourish on his own? This is all retrospective too, so we get the sense that he has already established a sense of self, but what constitutes that self is as elusive as a half completed canvas and we don’t really get a sense of where all these events lead ‘Son’.
So, in the end I can appreciate the brilliant combination of a simple and complex writing style during those moments I was able to liberate myself from this Murakami on speed writing style, but those moments were so scarce that I was left feeling empty and uninspired. Dorothy Tse is clearly a writer worthy of attention, and anyone with the patience to wade into her stories will surely find himself or herself rewarded.
January 4, 2015
**Thank you Netgalley and Muse for providing this in exchange for an honest review**
3.5 Stars
I believe this may be the weirdest book I've ever read. I'm a bad reader when it comes to Anthologies. I usually read the first few stories and set the book aside. I always say I'll pick it back up soon, but that very rarely ever happens. To be honest, I'm pretty sure I've only ever finished one Anthology, besides this one, and that was only because there was a main story connecting everything together. Really, that's my main issue with anthologies. Short stories are exactly that. Short full stories. I know how the last story I read ends. Its too easy for me to say "Ok, I know how that ended. I'll just finish this novel sitting here beside me and then I'll read this next story". Problem is, I'll say that over and over again. Without a continuous story to keep my full attention, Anthologies are set back on the shelf and forgotten. This title took me forever to finish, BUT I did finish it. That should say a lot as to how much I enjoyed it. The stories were so different from anything I've ever read read before. I tend to avoid books that are loaded with sex. I'm glad they're out there for the readers who enjoy them, but they just aren't my cup of tea. The sex scenes in these stories were so bizarre, they weren't like anything I've come across before. The violence, while extreme, wasn't done in a gross-out kind of way.
I really hope to see a full length novel by Tse someday. Her storytelling is definitely unique
3.5 Stars
I believe this may be the weirdest book I've ever read. I'm a bad reader when it comes to Anthologies. I usually read the first few stories and set the book aside. I always say I'll pick it back up soon, but that very rarely ever happens. To be honest, I'm pretty sure I've only ever finished one Anthology, besides this one, and that was only because there was a main story connecting everything together. Really, that's my main issue with anthologies. Short stories are exactly that. Short full stories. I know how the last story I read ends. Its too easy for me to say "Ok, I know how that ended. I'll just finish this novel sitting here beside me and then I'll read this next story". Problem is, I'll say that over and over again. Without a continuous story to keep my full attention, Anthologies are set back on the shelf and forgotten. This title took me forever to finish, BUT I did finish it. That should say a lot as to how much I enjoyed it. The stories were so different from anything I've ever read read before. I tend to avoid books that are loaded with sex. I'm glad they're out there for the readers who enjoy them, but they just aren't my cup of tea. The sex scenes in these stories were so bizarre, they weren't like anything I've come across before. The violence, while extreme, wasn't done in a gross-out kind of way.
I really hope to see a full length novel by Tse someday. Her storytelling is definitely unique
August 8, 2014
I am not sure how to review this book but I will try - especially because I received it through goodreads in exchange for an honest review. So here goes.
I haven't dipped into surrealism for a little while. I needed to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate these stories so I did put it down occasionally to let my brain recharge - this is not a book to just breeze through at the beach.
The writing is beautiful. The author is not hesitant in her command of the story whether it is about a woman slowly transforming into a fish, "the door.. constructed in such a way as to conceal the fact that it does not exist", amputated heads/limbs - reality taking intriguing twists and turns into the surreal. I have no intention of retelling the stories - I could not do them justice, only break them apart then spend time admiring the author's skill while frightening many readers away. If you open your mind and allow them in, you will find yourself fascinated, too.
The introduction, written by Nicky Harman who translated the stories was the perfect beginning, setting the stage and easing the journey into the book. As the author is mixing magical realism with surrealism, it helped me relax into the stories, appreciating some dark humor while feeling some of the horror. Actually feeling a strange mix of horror and 'what!!!' (when a father offers his head to his son after his son was decapitated)...
If you are ready, read this book. Spends a few hours amazed at the command this woman has over her subjects. The writing style is, again, amazing. The stories will take you places you didn't imagine existed. You will carry some of them with you for a very long time.
I haven't dipped into surrealism for a little while. I needed to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate these stories so I did put it down occasionally to let my brain recharge - this is not a book to just breeze through at the beach.
The writing is beautiful. The author is not hesitant in her command of the story whether it is about a woman slowly transforming into a fish, "the door.. constructed in such a way as to conceal the fact that it does not exist", amputated heads/limbs - reality taking intriguing twists and turns into the surreal. I have no intention of retelling the stories - I could not do them justice, only break them apart then spend time admiring the author's skill while frightening many readers away. If you open your mind and allow them in, you will find yourself fascinated, too.
The introduction, written by Nicky Harman who translated the stories was the perfect beginning, setting the stage and easing the journey into the book. As the author is mixing magical realism with surrealism, it helped me relax into the stories, appreciating some dark humor while feeling some of the horror. Actually feeling a strange mix of horror and 'what!!!' (when a father offers his head to his son after his son was decapitated)...
If you are ready, read this book. Spends a few hours amazed at the command this woman has over her subjects. The writing style is, again, amazing. The stories will take you places you didn't imagine existed. You will carry some of them with you for a very long time.
March 16, 2015
There's certainly enough to enjoy in these charming, surreal pieces.
The back cover blurbs praise the translation and the author's "taut prose". So it's jarring to see a sentence like this:
People passing the showroom window and seeing the girl lying asleep just like an overripe apple fallen from the tree swarmed up like bluebottles drawn by the fruity nectar of her dreams.
Argh.
I haven't read the story ("Bed") in the original, so I don't know who was responsible for this. But there are other similarly unfortunate renderings through the collection.
The back cover blurbs praise the translation and the author's "taut prose". So it's jarring to see a sentence like this:
People passing the showroom window and seeing the girl lying asleep just like an overripe apple fallen from the tree swarmed up like bluebottles drawn by the fruity nectar of her dreams.
Argh.
I haven't read the story ("Bed") in the original, so I don't know who was responsible for this. But there are other similarly unfortunate renderings through the collection.
August 20, 2014
Dorothy Tse has won multiple literary awards in Hong Kong, and Snow and Shadow, a collection of short stories is her debut collection in English. One of the stories from the book, Fish Woman, was published in the Guardian, but as far as I can determine this book is the first and only actual collection of stories published in English. After doing a bit of research, it seems there is a consensus that the translation by Nicky Harman is fantastic. I could not find a single review that had anything remotely negative to say about the translation or that any of the book's essence was not translatable. That being said, this collection is anything but ordinary, and translation could not have been easy. These are stories that definitely feel translated, and that left me feeling fortunate that I could take this long, strange trip at all. I must disclose here, too, that I received my copy of the book free in exchange for my honest review.
I had to smile when, in "A Street in the Wind", one of this book's 13 short stories, a character who is preparing for exams leafs through a few more pages of his textbook and then decides to "take refuge in sleep". In Dorothy Tse's stories, sleep may well be the only refuge from the bizarre, the frightening, the crude, the cruel, the horrifying, the deadly, the rotten, and the stinking surrealistic existence of the various characters, cities and neighborhoods in what I assume is Hong Kong, or something like it. The stories are completely unrelated but a sense of ennui, despair, and anger hovers throughout each, providing a common thread. A general feeling that each character is just barely tolerating existence. Tse relates this beautifully in the story "Monthly Matters":
"March is immersed in a gray drizzle, but the city streets are like rigid, dried-up riverbeds. Crowds of people with souls like fish walk listlessly past the shops with drawn-down shutters...We get off the bus and walk along, each as silent as the other...The city's silence is not surprising. What is surprising is that we grit our teeth and endure it."
Prior to reading Snow and Shadow, I had read no surrealistic literature, and I must report that Snow and Shadow is no easy read. As Surrealism implies, the stories feel dream like, often tending more toward nightmares, in the sense that a thought can stop and a new one can start without warning or connection. A character can appear and disappear or reappear elsewhere with no explanation. At times it almost feels like free association. But I was impressed with how like dreaming the reading experience was. And I must say, that much like dreaming, the stories often feel like they might mean something more than they appear to mean on their surfaces. I was largely unsuccessful at determining those deeper meanings however, and again, much like actually dreaming, the details of the stories escaped me as I tried to recall them with the passage of time. Probably my favorite example of this was in the story "The Love Between Leaf and Knife", when on Valentine's Day, a once amorous couple in a relationship gone stale decides to demonstrate their love and commitment by each lopping off one of their own arms. When this deed is done, they walk to the hospital, they see lovers passing by with flowers and note that they each carry the other's arm instead. The story finishes with Leaf asking if Knife will scratch her back, and Knife does so with Leaf's own severed arm:
"So Knife held up Leaf's forearm and used it to trace circles on her back.
Leaf felt the ripples spreading outwards and, although something was not exactly the same, it reminded her of that first taste of love."
There were other premises that I thought were particularly insightful and thought provoking, my favorite being "Blessed Bodies" in which a sex trade exists where one can pay with body parts if they are short of money. As you might imagine, several poor men agree to these deals (perhaps this isn't all that surrealistic?) and neighborhoods are filled with men slowly giving their bodies away. As Tse describes it:
"At the moment of sexual arousal, a man would stand in the doorway, peeping into a dim room where a woman reclined on the bed. Once she adopted the desired position, he no longer cared about his arms or legs. But with the ebbings of arousal, the man would open his yes to see what had once been his limb- first amputated, then frozen, bottled, and removed. Only then would he be astonished at the impulsive decision he had made."
I found myself often wondering how much, if any, of Snow and Shadow was a criticism of society in Hong Kong that simply goes over the head of someone like me who is unfamiliar with the country, the language and the culture. But not grasping such nuances, if they do indeed exist, does not take away from the overall reading experience. Snow and Shadow felt like a journey to another culture in a distant land and that was perhaps my favorite thing about this collection. It took me someplace that I've never been, and while this was not a comfortable read, it was a worthwhile one.
I had to smile when, in "A Street in the Wind", one of this book's 13 short stories, a character who is preparing for exams leafs through a few more pages of his textbook and then decides to "take refuge in sleep". In Dorothy Tse's stories, sleep may well be the only refuge from the bizarre, the frightening, the crude, the cruel, the horrifying, the deadly, the rotten, and the stinking surrealistic existence of the various characters, cities and neighborhoods in what I assume is Hong Kong, or something like it. The stories are completely unrelated but a sense of ennui, despair, and anger hovers throughout each, providing a common thread. A general feeling that each character is just barely tolerating existence. Tse relates this beautifully in the story "Monthly Matters":
"March is immersed in a gray drizzle, but the city streets are like rigid, dried-up riverbeds. Crowds of people with souls like fish walk listlessly past the shops with drawn-down shutters...We get off the bus and walk along, each as silent as the other...The city's silence is not surprising. What is surprising is that we grit our teeth and endure it."
Prior to reading Snow and Shadow, I had read no surrealistic literature, and I must report that Snow and Shadow is no easy read. As Surrealism implies, the stories feel dream like, often tending more toward nightmares, in the sense that a thought can stop and a new one can start without warning or connection. A character can appear and disappear or reappear elsewhere with no explanation. At times it almost feels like free association. But I was impressed with how like dreaming the reading experience was. And I must say, that much like dreaming, the stories often feel like they might mean something more than they appear to mean on their surfaces. I was largely unsuccessful at determining those deeper meanings however, and again, much like actually dreaming, the details of the stories escaped me as I tried to recall them with the passage of time. Probably my favorite example of this was in the story "The Love Between Leaf and Knife", when on Valentine's Day, a once amorous couple in a relationship gone stale decides to demonstrate their love and commitment by each lopping off one of their own arms. When this deed is done, they walk to the hospital, they see lovers passing by with flowers and note that they each carry the other's arm instead. The story finishes with Leaf asking if Knife will scratch her back, and Knife does so with Leaf's own severed arm:
"So Knife held up Leaf's forearm and used it to trace circles on her back.
Leaf felt the ripples spreading outwards and, although something was not exactly the same, it reminded her of that first taste of love."
There were other premises that I thought were particularly insightful and thought provoking, my favorite being "Blessed Bodies" in which a sex trade exists where one can pay with body parts if they are short of money. As you might imagine, several poor men agree to these deals (perhaps this isn't all that surrealistic?) and neighborhoods are filled with men slowly giving their bodies away. As Tse describes it:
"At the moment of sexual arousal, a man would stand in the doorway, peeping into a dim room where a woman reclined on the bed. Once she adopted the desired position, he no longer cared about his arms or legs. But with the ebbings of arousal, the man would open his yes to see what had once been his limb- first amputated, then frozen, bottled, and removed. Only then would he be astonished at the impulsive decision he had made."
I found myself often wondering how much, if any, of Snow and Shadow was a criticism of society in Hong Kong that simply goes over the head of someone like me who is unfamiliar with the country, the language and the culture. But not grasping such nuances, if they do indeed exist, does not take away from the overall reading experience. Snow and Shadow felt like a journey to another culture in a distant land and that was perhaps my favorite thing about this collection. It took me someplace that I've never been, and while this was not a comfortable read, it was a worthwhile one.
June 2, 2014
"This palace is a depraved place."
(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic copy of this book for review from the publisher.)
Dorothy Tse's Snow and Shadow is like nothing you've ever read. Fantastical, surreal, and full of unexpected gore, the stories found within these pages are as odd as they are beautifully written. While some of the pieces start off with both feet seemingly planted firmly in this world ("in a vein of apparently innocent realism," to quote translator Nicky Harman) before veering off into another, dreamlike dimension, others flaunt their peculiarities from the opening sentences. As if the unusual and absurd plots aren't enough, Tse creates further distance by giving the stories' protagonists impersonal names: some are just "the boy" or "the girl," while others are named after objects ("Leaf" and "Knife") or simply referred to by letters ("J," "K," and "Q" are especially popular choices). While some of the pieces are a little out there for my taste, there's no denying that Tse is a gifted and masterful storyteller.
The collection is comprised of thirteen stories:
"Woman Fish" - A man's wife inexplicably morphs into a half-human, half-fish hybrid. After a period of trying to maintain their domesticity, he releases her into the ocean.
"The Love Between Leaf and Knife" - In this competition of love, a long-married couple tries to prove that they each love the other the most through a series of escalating (and increasingly violent) demonstrations.
"The Traveling Family" - Hiding atop the roof of a tour bus, a family goes on a road trip of sorts. Dad is lost quickly when he absconds with a gang of thieves who rob said bus; shortly thereafter, Mom joins a troupe of weepings actors, and Sister disappears into the Butterfly House, never to be seen again. Before departing herself, Grandmother reveals the purpose of the trip to Son, the last remaining member of the group.
"Head" - When Tree "loses" his head, his father Wood gives him his own. Now that the family patriarch is headless, Tree must assume control of the family business. But is Tree still Tree now that he's wearing someone else's face?
"Blessed Bodies" - Y-Land has a prosperous sex industry, and not much else. In a land steeped in poverty, johns can barter anything for sex - including their own body parts. ("You'll lose your body here.")
"A Street in the Wind" - A father obsessed with detective shows, a son ditching his studies in favor of origami, and a sister fishing for her "one-of-a-kind" dress's twin are just a few of the hapless residents of this street in the wind.
"Black Cat City" - According to the author Puryatevich Loosai, "when memories start to fade, people get a subconscious urge to kill a cat."
"The Apartment Block"
"Monthly Matters" - In which one town experiences an influx of pregnant women, endangered wolves, and dead birds.
"Bed" - Even in death, beds are elusive; and even those with a soft place to nestle down find that sleep can be difficult to come by.
"The Mute Door" - In the Displacement Apartments, returning home is sometimes such an epic quest that it's like finding the motherland again.
"Bitter Melon" - When a construction company begins to build on farmland that used to birth bitter melons, the tattooed Bitter Melon Girls gather to keep vigil at the site. But is it the farmers' livelihoods they mourn - or something more dangerous?
"Snow and Shadow" - Snow and Shadow are two princesses who unwittingly end up married to each others' fathers - and pregnant by the same man.
The titular "Snow and Shadow" is by far my favorite. With fairy tale elements, it reads like a surreal version of "Snow White." I also enjoyed "Woman Fish," and can't help but wonder whether Tse chose the visage of a fish because their faces (much like those of birds) are so different from those of humans - unable to display emotions in ways recognized by people; hard to read; alien, even. "The Traveling Family," "Head," and "Blessed Bodies" are also quite engaging.
"The Apartment Block" is the only story I struggled through (as evidenced by my lack of a summary). The characters don't have any names, just initials ("O," "J," "D"), which made the plot terribly difficult to follow, and I soon gave up.
Since rape, sexual exploitation, incest, and severed body parts are common elements, Snow and Shadow isn't for the faint of heart. Ditto if you enjoy your short fiction with a plausible plot and easily discerned message. The review title (taken from "Snow and Shadow") pretty much sums it up: "This palace is a depraved place." Enter at your own risk.
http://www.easyvegan.info/2014/06/13/...
(Full disclosure: I received a free electronic copy of this book for review from the publisher.)
Dorothy Tse's Snow and Shadow is like nothing you've ever read. Fantastical, surreal, and full of unexpected gore, the stories found within these pages are as odd as they are beautifully written. While some of the pieces start off with both feet seemingly planted firmly in this world ("in a vein of apparently innocent realism," to quote translator Nicky Harman) before veering off into another, dreamlike dimension, others flaunt their peculiarities from the opening sentences. As if the unusual and absurd plots aren't enough, Tse creates further distance by giving the stories' protagonists impersonal names: some are just "the boy" or "the girl," while others are named after objects ("Leaf" and "Knife") or simply referred to by letters ("J," "K," and "Q" are especially popular choices). While some of the pieces are a little out there for my taste, there's no denying that Tse is a gifted and masterful storyteller.
The collection is comprised of thirteen stories:
"Woman Fish" - A man's wife inexplicably morphs into a half-human, half-fish hybrid. After a period of trying to maintain their domesticity, he releases her into the ocean.
"The Love Between Leaf and Knife" - In this competition of love, a long-married couple tries to prove that they each love the other the most through a series of escalating (and increasingly violent) demonstrations.
"The Traveling Family" - Hiding atop the roof of a tour bus, a family goes on a road trip of sorts. Dad is lost quickly when he absconds with a gang of thieves who rob said bus; shortly thereafter, Mom joins a troupe of weepings actors, and Sister disappears into the Butterfly House, never to be seen again. Before departing herself, Grandmother reveals the purpose of the trip to Son, the last remaining member of the group.
"Head" - When Tree "loses" his head, his father Wood gives him his own. Now that the family patriarch is headless, Tree must assume control of the family business. But is Tree still Tree now that he's wearing someone else's face?
"Blessed Bodies" - Y-Land has a prosperous sex industry, and not much else. In a land steeped in poverty, johns can barter anything for sex - including their own body parts. ("You'll lose your body here.")
"A Street in the Wind" - A father obsessed with detective shows, a son ditching his studies in favor of origami, and a sister fishing for her "one-of-a-kind" dress's twin are just a few of the hapless residents of this street in the wind.
"Black Cat City" - According to the author Puryatevich Loosai, "when memories start to fade, people get a subconscious urge to kill a cat."
"The Apartment Block"
"Monthly Matters" - In which one town experiences an influx of pregnant women, endangered wolves, and dead birds.
"Bed" - Even in death, beds are elusive; and even those with a soft place to nestle down find that sleep can be difficult to come by.
"The Mute Door" - In the Displacement Apartments, returning home is sometimes such an epic quest that it's like finding the motherland again.
"Bitter Melon" - When a construction company begins to build on farmland that used to birth bitter melons, the tattooed Bitter Melon Girls gather to keep vigil at the site. But is it the farmers' livelihoods they mourn - or something more dangerous?
"Snow and Shadow" - Snow and Shadow are two princesses who unwittingly end up married to each others' fathers - and pregnant by the same man.
The titular "Snow and Shadow" is by far my favorite. With fairy tale elements, it reads like a surreal version of "Snow White." I also enjoyed "Woman Fish," and can't help but wonder whether Tse chose the visage of a fish because their faces (much like those of birds) are so different from those of humans - unable to display emotions in ways recognized by people; hard to read; alien, even. "The Traveling Family," "Head," and "Blessed Bodies" are also quite engaging.
"The Apartment Block" is the only story I struggled through (as evidenced by my lack of a summary). The characters don't have any names, just initials ("O," "J," "D"), which made the plot terribly difficult to follow, and I soon gave up.
Since rape, sexual exploitation, incest, and severed body parts are common elements, Snow and Shadow isn't for the faint of heart. Ditto if you enjoy your short fiction with a plausible plot and easily discerned message. The review title (taken from "Snow and Shadow") pretty much sums it up: "This palace is a depraved place." Enter at your own risk.
http://www.easyvegan.info/2014/06/13/...
September 8, 2014
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
This is a beautiful collection of allegorical short stories written in poetic prose. The ideas here are so dense and thought provoking that it took me a few days to read it, even though it isn't long. When I started out, I wasn't sure what to make of the warning in the blurb for the book about not being for the faint of heart and body parts falling off. I don't read horror, I don't enjoy violence. But I think the warning is a little misleading. Yes, body parts get detached far more often than is healthy (is it ever healthy?), but they are symbolic just as everything else is here. This is not a gory book. Let me give a couple examples, since it would have helped me to decide to read it with more confidence. I don't know whether I should warn about spoilers, since this isn't exactly a suspenseful collection, but I'm about to summarize a couple of the stories.
In one story, we explore an imaginary city in which women sell their bodies in the traditional sense, but men pay for their services by giving up literal body parts: arms, feet, eyes, etc. So men are the walking wounded, and the author shows us the impossibility of love in this town. With this introduction of an impossible symmetry in a highly asymmetrical subject in our world, we are forced to view anew the absurdity of our world. The point is not the gruesome process of removing body parts. The point is to view our society in a new light.
In another story, a couple competes with one another to suffer in giving each other gifts. They each give as much as they can, without stopping to either appreciate what is given to them or to consider what the other actually needs. The result is repeated expressions of love that are spectacularly ineffective. Ultimately they reach a frenzied climax and literally give each other sawed-off arms. Again, the point here is about giving in a relationship, about confusing suffering with love, which happens more often than we'd like to admit. The arms are metaphorical and I didn't see it as a gory episode.
So if you think you can handle that level of metaphorical violence, I strongly recommend the entire collection. I'm still trying to work through all the ideas presented here, and it'll be worth a few re-reads for me, but I love reading experiences that help me see the world around me differently. There are a few stories that I'm not sure I really got all the way, but they also gave me snippets of brilliance in metaphor, richness of experience.
This is a beautiful collection of allegorical short stories written in poetic prose. The ideas here are so dense and thought provoking that it took me a few days to read it, even though it isn't long. When I started out, I wasn't sure what to make of the warning in the blurb for the book about not being for the faint of heart and body parts falling off. I don't read horror, I don't enjoy violence. But I think the warning is a little misleading. Yes, body parts get detached far more often than is healthy (is it ever healthy?), but they are symbolic just as everything else is here. This is not a gory book. Let me give a couple examples, since it would have helped me to decide to read it with more confidence. I don't know whether I should warn about spoilers, since this isn't exactly a suspenseful collection, but I'm about to summarize a couple of the stories.
In one story, we explore an imaginary city in which women sell their bodies in the traditional sense, but men pay for their services by giving up literal body parts: arms, feet, eyes, etc. So men are the walking wounded, and the author shows us the impossibility of love in this town. With this introduction of an impossible symmetry in a highly asymmetrical subject in our world, we are forced to view anew the absurdity of our world. The point is not the gruesome process of removing body parts. The point is to view our society in a new light.
In another story, a couple competes with one another to suffer in giving each other gifts. They each give as much as they can, without stopping to either appreciate what is given to them or to consider what the other actually needs. The result is repeated expressions of love that are spectacularly ineffective. Ultimately they reach a frenzied climax and literally give each other sawed-off arms. Again, the point here is about giving in a relationship, about confusing suffering with love, which happens more often than we'd like to admit. The arms are metaphorical and I didn't see it as a gory episode.
So if you think you can handle that level of metaphorical violence, I strongly recommend the entire collection. I'm still trying to work through all the ideas presented here, and it'll be worth a few re-reads for me, but I love reading experiences that help me see the world around me differently. There are a few stories that I'm not sure I really got all the way, but they also gave me snippets of brilliance in metaphor, richness of experience.
April 16, 2015
snow and shadow offers a baker's dozen of violent, sexual, surrealist short stories from hong kongese author dorothy tse. while these stories left me utterly unmoved (and mostly unimpressed), tse certainly has both a unique voice and narrative style. tse frequently invokes stark, often beautiful imagery, but her stories seem to favor illusive/elusiveness over cohesion. although snow and shadow will appeal to many, i found little to like.
night, like an intricate, indigo veil, crept over the high wall of the hospital, gradually enveloping the building and grounds. at dusk, the doctor busied himself by the wall, pruning the roses, scrambling up their creeping tendrils until he got halfway up the building. a long-drawn-out snoring reverberated through the silence of the hospital. the corpses that were not completely decomposed conversed quietly with the dreamers, a sound the doctor was well used to. now, however, to his surprise, he found himself yawning drowsily at the sky. the lonely eye of the moon glared down at him.*translated from the chinese by nicky harman
August 1, 2014
3.5 stars rounded up to 4
Within each short story in this collection, Tse generally starts off by presenting seemingly disparate elements that she ends up connecting in an enjoyable way by the end of the story. Her writing style and nice turns of phrase also add to the atmosphere of the book. Certainly some darker topics ("limbs, and even heads, are lopped off with alarming regularity") but not something the author delves into with too much detail, so it often feels less dark and more just surreal (granted, I'm a frequent reader of dark literature). Although I enjoy my fair share of surrealism, some of the stories were a bit too surreal for me, and I felt that I didn't really gain anything from reading them. Nonetheless, an overall interesting collection with "The Love Between Leaf and Knife" and "The Traveling Family" as some of my favorites.
Thank you to Goodreads giveaways for allowing me to read and review this book.
Within each short story in this collection, Tse generally starts off by presenting seemingly disparate elements that she ends up connecting in an enjoyable way by the end of the story. Her writing style and nice turns of phrase also add to the atmosphere of the book. Certainly some darker topics ("limbs, and even heads, are lopped off with alarming regularity") but not something the author delves into with too much detail, so it often feels less dark and more just surreal (granted, I'm a frequent reader of dark literature). Although I enjoy my fair share of surrealism, some of the stories were a bit too surreal for me, and I felt that I didn't really gain anything from reading them. Nonetheless, an overall interesting collection with "The Love Between Leaf and Knife" and "The Traveling Family" as some of my favorites.
Thank you to Goodreads giveaways for allowing me to read and review this book.
April 5, 2014
This collection of short stories is different from much of the translated literature from China. The feeling is very personal and intimate, and the author is able to create some moving connections with her characters, even though her style is very surreal, and even though she often gives characters generic names (like, simply, "The Girl", "Leaf," or "A"). I especially like "A Street in the Wind", "Black Cat City" and "Bed". Another good one, "The Mute Door" is more to the end of extreme surrealism. Many of the stories have a nightmarish, gruesome feeling. Not comfortable to read, but really made me think.
July 10, 2014
Although literary surrealism isn't really my thing, this was an interesting collection. My favorite story was "The Love Between Leaf and Knife" which I read as a sort of metaphor; some of the other tales weren't as amenable to this type of interpretation, however. I'd say the collection is fairly Kafkaesque but definitely much darker than his work. Pick it up if you dig contemporary surrealist texts.
August 20, 2014
(Disclaimer: I received a free electronic version of this book through First Reads.)
This collection of short stories bears the scent of a modern-day Grimm's fairy tales. Each story is immersive and has the taste of reality somehow twisted. The characters are interesting, the settings fantastic yet coherent. This book has an overall slightly-disorienting effect that is nonetheless enjoyable.
This collection of short stories bears the scent of a modern-day Grimm's fairy tales. Each story is immersive and has the taste of reality somehow twisted. The characters are interesting, the settings fantastic yet coherent. This book has an overall slightly-disorienting effect that is nonetheless enjoyable.
August 9, 2014
Bizarre and beautiful. This is an excellent collection of surreal short fiction. Highly recommended for fans of body horror and weird tales.
January 13, 2015
This review originally appeared on
monkeybicycle
,
For surreal fiction to work, the writer must have confidence. No matter how fantastic the images and situations, it always comes back to confidence. The reader should not sense the author’s doubt in either prose or content. The best works of magical realism flood forward on the page like an endless ribbon being pulled, and this is so apparent in Hong Kong writer Dorothy Tse’s newest short story collection, Snow and Shadow.
Each story is constructed out of “cool sentences,” as translator Nicky Harman notes in her introduction to the collection. Tse is not concerned with ornamental language, and the reader is lulled forward with prose free of stuffy word choices, leaving an exactness that evokes a world sometimes similar to our own, which then becomes a world populated with often nightmarish scenarios.
Almost all of the stories are set in some sort of urban space: tightly packed apartment buildings, hospitals, busy streets. It is only the final and titular story, “Snow and Shadow,” that finds itself apart resting in a world concerned with emperors, imperial guards and the like. But the story still feels consistent with the other stories, for it does not escape Tse’s fantastic eye.
Instead of expected and ordinary names, Tse calls her characters Tree, Leaf, Knife, Wood, Recall, Memoria, or the more Kafkaesque, K and J, shifting focus from the specificity of names. They are all individuals, but it is often less about them and more about how they relate to other characters, with many of them offered as dichotomies or reactions to others. In “Head,” a family awakens to the mysterious disappearance of the son’s head. Like all good magical realism, the story is not about the explanation of the circumstances, but how the world operates within these fantastic terms. The images are stark right from the beginning as the son, Tree, is led to an ambulance, headless, not at all an unusual predicament in Tse’s stories.
Hospital beds and wheelchairs whizzed back and forth, many of them occupied by patients who had lost noses, limbs, hearts, and other organs…he came to a decision: he would donate his own head to his twenty-five-year-old only son.
The father, Wood, donates his own head, transforming the story into an examination of a father’s passion for his son without abandoning the more surreal elements. What we get is a pseudo-family history going back before the birth of Tree in 1977. Wood becomes obsessed with his unborn child, often drawing his wife with the shape of a fetus growing inside her. When asked who he is drawing, he pulls out a photograph of himself and says, “I’m using this. That kid’s going to be the spitting image of me.” This statement is a familiar one between parents and children, but it becomes bizarre in the capable hands of the author. The transplanted head still retains the face of the father. It is not quite grotesque, because it is encapsulated in a magical realistic world, but it could be argued that it is toeing the line.
Not all thirteen stories of Snow and Shadow are composed of lopped off heads and transformed bodies. Some are dreamlike and give the feeling of a hand running through water leaving swirls and ripples around it. “The Mute Door” recalls non-existing doors that mimes construct out of waves of their hands in the air: The door is constructed in such a way as to conceal the fact that it does not exist. The idea is introduced so aptly and can be applied not only to the story, but to the collection as a whole. Smells, emotions, and occurrences are identifiable in Snow and Shadow, yet they reside in a dream—or nightmare, in some cases. A pizza delivery man is labelled a stranger when he comes to the Displacement Apartments in “The Mute Door,” but like the residents, once he enters the building, he can’t quite find the right door. Reminiscent of Kafka’s unbreached castle, the apartment building is so perfectly name Displacement and no matter how hard they try, the residents just can’t find their way to the correct front doors. Many even pack suitcases to take with them whenever they leave home, so upon their return when predictably they are unable to find the correct door, they have novels and laptops to keep them company in the bustling corridors.
"[F]or the residents, the apartments are like face-down playing cards on a table top, moving around, taking their doors with them, in a completely random way. That is to say, when the residents leave their apartments, they have to go through the process of finding them once more, with no rules to follow."
Like the residents of the Displacement Apartments, there are no rules to Snow and Shadow. The unexpected is king and explanations are uncalled for. Turning into a fish or actors’ tears becoming bees and centipedes are par for the course. Lovers might hack off their own limbs for each other, but I would have it no other way. Their wounds linger on the reader’s mind like thick brush strokes.
Nicky Harman does an excellent job translating Tse’s stories. They stand alone, but together build a hypnotic trance, each sentence rendered with a sense of grace and sparseness. The images and actions are left on their own, not muddied by a heavy hand.
The stories within Snow and Shadow build on each other with every new page. They are blunt, stark, and nightmarish, and this is what makes them all so exquisite. Through Harman, Dorothy Tse’s collection manifests an individual voice in a world overflowing with the unexpected.
For surreal fiction to work, the writer must have confidence. No matter how fantastic the images and situations, it always comes back to confidence. The reader should not sense the author’s doubt in either prose or content. The best works of magical realism flood forward on the page like an endless ribbon being pulled, and this is so apparent in Hong Kong writer Dorothy Tse’s newest short story collection, Snow and Shadow.
Each story is constructed out of “cool sentences,” as translator Nicky Harman notes in her introduction to the collection. Tse is not concerned with ornamental language, and the reader is lulled forward with prose free of stuffy word choices, leaving an exactness that evokes a world sometimes similar to our own, which then becomes a world populated with often nightmarish scenarios.
Almost all of the stories are set in some sort of urban space: tightly packed apartment buildings, hospitals, busy streets. It is only the final and titular story, “Snow and Shadow,” that finds itself apart resting in a world concerned with emperors, imperial guards and the like. But the story still feels consistent with the other stories, for it does not escape Tse’s fantastic eye.
Instead of expected and ordinary names, Tse calls her characters Tree, Leaf, Knife, Wood, Recall, Memoria, or the more Kafkaesque, K and J, shifting focus from the specificity of names. They are all individuals, but it is often less about them and more about how they relate to other characters, with many of them offered as dichotomies or reactions to others. In “Head,” a family awakens to the mysterious disappearance of the son’s head. Like all good magical realism, the story is not about the explanation of the circumstances, but how the world operates within these fantastic terms. The images are stark right from the beginning as the son, Tree, is led to an ambulance, headless, not at all an unusual predicament in Tse’s stories.
Hospital beds and wheelchairs whizzed back and forth, many of them occupied by patients who had lost noses, limbs, hearts, and other organs…he came to a decision: he would donate his own head to his twenty-five-year-old only son.
The father, Wood, donates his own head, transforming the story into an examination of a father’s passion for his son without abandoning the more surreal elements. What we get is a pseudo-family history going back before the birth of Tree in 1977. Wood becomes obsessed with his unborn child, often drawing his wife with the shape of a fetus growing inside her. When asked who he is drawing, he pulls out a photograph of himself and says, “I’m using this. That kid’s going to be the spitting image of me.” This statement is a familiar one between parents and children, but it becomes bizarre in the capable hands of the author. The transplanted head still retains the face of the father. It is not quite grotesque, because it is encapsulated in a magical realistic world, but it could be argued that it is toeing the line.
Not all thirteen stories of Snow and Shadow are composed of lopped off heads and transformed bodies. Some are dreamlike and give the feeling of a hand running through water leaving swirls and ripples around it. “The Mute Door” recalls non-existing doors that mimes construct out of waves of their hands in the air: The door is constructed in such a way as to conceal the fact that it does not exist. The idea is introduced so aptly and can be applied not only to the story, but to the collection as a whole. Smells, emotions, and occurrences are identifiable in Snow and Shadow, yet they reside in a dream—or nightmare, in some cases. A pizza delivery man is labelled a stranger when he comes to the Displacement Apartments in “The Mute Door,” but like the residents, once he enters the building, he can’t quite find the right door. Reminiscent of Kafka’s unbreached castle, the apartment building is so perfectly name Displacement and no matter how hard they try, the residents just can’t find their way to the correct front doors. Many even pack suitcases to take with them whenever they leave home, so upon their return when predictably they are unable to find the correct door, they have novels and laptops to keep them company in the bustling corridors.
"[F]or the residents, the apartments are like face-down playing cards on a table top, moving around, taking their doors with them, in a completely random way. That is to say, when the residents leave their apartments, they have to go through the process of finding them once more, with no rules to follow."
Like the residents of the Displacement Apartments, there are no rules to Snow and Shadow. The unexpected is king and explanations are uncalled for. Turning into a fish or actors’ tears becoming bees and centipedes are par for the course. Lovers might hack off their own limbs for each other, but I would have it no other way. Their wounds linger on the reader’s mind like thick brush strokes.
Nicky Harman does an excellent job translating Tse’s stories. They stand alone, but together build a hypnotic trance, each sentence rendered with a sense of grace and sparseness. The images and actions are left on their own, not muddied by a heavy hand.
The stories within Snow and Shadow build on each other with every new page. They are blunt, stark, and nightmarish, and this is what makes them all so exquisite. Through Harman, Dorothy Tse’s collection manifests an individual voice in a world overflowing with the unexpected.
October 28, 2017
"To start with, the girl found the bed enormous, until her and her sister’s bodies began inexorably to grow bigger and the bed grew smaller and smaller. By night, they lay with their arms and legs entangled like flayed pig carcasses littering the slaughterhouse, and their dreams thickened and darkened, becoming as heavy as lead. Sometimes, jerking awake, they smelled the stink of each other’s sweat and grumbled and yanked at each other’s hair before eventually falling asleep, exausted."
June 4, 2024
I didn’t get it and is possibly the weirdest book I’ve ever read. And I like weird books, except this one
August 28, 2019
Snow and Shadow is not a direct equivalent to any Tse short story collection previously published in Chinese, but rather a greatest hits designed to introduce English-speaking readers to her work. The collection is an assemblage of dreamy, anti-moral parables set in the shifting topography of a surreal Hong Kong. Tse’s style is direct yet obscure, characterized by a loose physicality, impersonal, often iconic, characters, overtones of classic fairy tales turned in on themselves, and, as translator Nicky Harman notes, “a total absence of sentimentality.” Together, these elements create a sense of unreality that enables extreme violence with a minimum of true horror.
In the first selection, “Woman Fish,” a lying wife transforms into a sort of grotesque mermaid, her head and torso morphing into those of a fish while her legs remain human. The piece reminded me of Aimee Bender’s “The Rememberer” in which a woman watches her lover devolve into a turtle. In “The Love Between Leaf and Knife” a suffering couple engage in an inverted “Gift of the Magi” scenario in which each competes to sacrifice more. In another selection a boy wakes without a head. “Monthly Matters” features these amazing, jarring, violent one-line descriptions of pregnancy, popping balloons, stabbing of pregnant women, discarded fetuses, a girl cut, like Riding Hood, from the belly of a wolf. In the final, title selection, Tse re-imagines Snow White as a brutal hall-of-mirrors story of doppelganger princesses and obsessive emperors, in a snowy country where dwarves and animals with surgically enhanced human features patrol the forests.
I found myself drawn to my favorite tale, “The Mute Door,” initially by the lyricism of the language in the introductory passages. In it, an anonymous pizza delivery boy known only as “the stranger” wanders the constantly shifting halls of a maze-like building, searching for an apartment that may or may not exist. Its an ominous, alienating piece, one of the most concrete, and, for me, “easiest” offerings in the collection.
You can read a slightly longer (and more personal) version of this review on Litocracy: http://litocracy.com/snow-and-shadow-...
In the first selection, “Woman Fish,” a lying wife transforms into a sort of grotesque mermaid, her head and torso morphing into those of a fish while her legs remain human. The piece reminded me of Aimee Bender’s “The Rememberer” in which a woman watches her lover devolve into a turtle. In “The Love Between Leaf and Knife” a suffering couple engage in an inverted “Gift of the Magi” scenario in which each competes to sacrifice more. In another selection a boy wakes without a head. “Monthly Matters” features these amazing, jarring, violent one-line descriptions of pregnancy, popping balloons, stabbing of pregnant women, discarded fetuses, a girl cut, like Riding Hood, from the belly of a wolf. In the final, title selection, Tse re-imagines Snow White as a brutal hall-of-mirrors story of doppelganger princesses and obsessive emperors, in a snowy country where dwarves and animals with surgically enhanced human features patrol the forests.
I found myself drawn to my favorite tale, “The Mute Door,” initially by the lyricism of the language in the introductory passages. In it, an anonymous pizza delivery boy known only as “the stranger” wanders the constantly shifting halls of a maze-like building, searching for an apartment that may or may not exist. Its an ominous, alienating piece, one of the most concrete, and, for me, “easiest” offerings in the collection.
You can read a slightly longer (and more personal) version of this review on Litocracy: http://litocracy.com/snow-and-shadow-...
October 21, 2014
In this terse, but superb, short story collection, Hong Kong writer Dorothy Tse reveals herself as a master of surrealistic speculative fiction as memorable as anything written by the likes of Franz Kafka and Haruki Murakami, with favorable comparisons too with notable contemporary writers Dan Chaon and Brian Evenson. Her tales are especially noteworthy for their visionary, almost dream-like, settings, with characters that could spring from the pages of Murakami's "Kafka on the Shore" and "1Q84", but these are characters that are distinctively Chinese, not Japanese nor American, especially with regards to ample instances of melancholy and dread which are reflected in the pages of these tales. In plain English, these stories may shock and surprise readers with their preoccupations with death and darkness, of which "Head", and "The Love Between Leaf and Knife" may be among the most memorable, and yet, even their horrific details pale in comparison with the final tale - and title story - "Snow and Shadow", about an unnamed emperor's search for love and redemption. Translator Nicky Harman has done a most admirable job in translating the original written Chinese into English prose often lovely and poetic, and yielding what has to be one of the most distinctively commendable collections of short stories published this year.
October 22, 2014
Dorothy Tse is talented and I haven't any doubt that many will love Snow and Shadow. Her tales are strange and bend the mind without trying too hard, as some surreal writers do. Her ability to create a weird universe flows so naturally that the reader can easily lose themselves.
The love between Leaf and Knife was my favorite story, it reminded me of the French film Love Me if You Dare (Jeux d'enfants), if it was in an alternate horror filled universe. A couple proves their love with outlandish acts, that turn extreme. It was such fun to read at night. And I do realize it's a strange comparison but these stories leave a strange fog in your brain.
Light readers run, because the tales are dark and deal in heavy subjects. I don't want to probe too deeply into each tale, giving anything away. I must say the first story is wedged inside my brain. The descriptive nature of her writing is so beautiful, I felt like I was the fish woman's husband. Setting her free had such meaning, and even though the endings are also a bit elusive, you still grasp something the author is saying in each unique tale.
I would love to read a full novel by Tse. Wonderful!! And as I say often, I am not a huge fan of short stories, so for me to enjoy them says a lot. I have so many friends that would love this collection. Yes yes yes!!
September 26, 2014
3.5
Beautiful, surreal, magical, gory, strange, poetic. The stories in Dorothy Tse's interesting collection made me pause and feel, much more than they made me think and analyze—an effect that is usually created by a non-verbal piece of art like music or abstract painting. In some stories that are so high-concept or so fairy tale-like, it was hard to care for the characters because so clearly they were not real (I couldn't quite connect with the title story, which is a re-imagining of Snow White of sorts). For some readers, of course, the "realness" doesn't matter that much.
In other stories (like "The Love Between Leaf and Knife", "The Traveling Family", "Head", "Bitter Melon"), the imagery and absurd story came together so well it took my breath away.
I did enjoy the way many of the stories presented a sly provocation through the bold imagery and plotting, making the reader question just how much of the fantastical turns should be taken literally, how much are metaphors--for love, loss, pain, unmooring, capitalism, environmental destruction--and how much is playful nonsense.
Overall, a pleasure to read.
Disclosure: I won the book through the Goodreads Giveaway.
Beautiful, surreal, magical, gory, strange, poetic. The stories in Dorothy Tse's interesting collection made me pause and feel, much more than they made me think and analyze—an effect that is usually created by a non-verbal piece of art like music or abstract painting. In some stories that are so high-concept or so fairy tale-like, it was hard to care for the characters because so clearly they were not real (I couldn't quite connect with the title story, which is a re-imagining of Snow White of sorts). For some readers, of course, the "realness" doesn't matter that much.
In other stories (like "The Love Between Leaf and Knife", "The Traveling Family", "Head", "Bitter Melon"), the imagery and absurd story came together so well it took my breath away.
I did enjoy the way many of the stories presented a sly provocation through the bold imagery and plotting, making the reader question just how much of the fantastical turns should be taken literally, how much are metaphors--for love, loss, pain, unmooring, capitalism, environmental destruction--and how much is playful nonsense.
Overall, a pleasure to read.
Disclosure: I won the book through the Goodreads Giveaway.
September 22, 2014
This is not my kind of book. It is like reading Picasso. I think Picasso translates better. The author's world is definitely surreal.
I found the stories violent and while some provoked thought, others seemed pointless to me. I think the title is the best part of the book.
I was looking forward to reading this book because of all the good reviews I saw. However, I found it a chore to read. It is not long but I could not enjoy it and finally after weeks of struggling, I gave up because things did not seem to be getting better for me. I can't decide if it is me or if the emperor has no clothes.
I found the stories violent and while some provoked thought, others seemed pointless to me. I think the title is the best part of the book.
I was looking forward to reading this book because of all the good reviews I saw. However, I found it a chore to read. It is not long but I could not enjoy it and finally after weeks of struggling, I gave up because things did not seem to be getting better for me. I can't decide if it is me or if the emperor has no clothes.
August 1, 2016
This is a work where the celebration of language, the cultural norms, the expected is all thrown up in the air and the outcome is a surreal, macabre world of a city sitting in between cultures. If you find the Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa’s short “Gothic” tales slightly off-beat or bizarre then crank those up to volume eleven, add a little more and you wouldn’t even hold a candle to Dorothy Tse’s musings.
Our book contains thirteen short stories, opening with Tse’s first published story “Woman Fish”, which appeared in ‘The Guardian” in 2013. Basically it is the story of a man’s wife who turns into a fish:
For my full review go to http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/
Our book contains thirteen short stories, opening with Tse’s first published story “Woman Fish”, which appeared in ‘The Guardian” in 2013. Basically it is the story of a man’s wife who turns into a fish:
For my full review go to http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/
September 20, 2014
Receiving a digital copy in exchange for an honest review, SNOW AND SHADOW is a collection of short stories by Dorothy Tse. The stories themselves are surrealistic, downright strange and oftentimes bizarre. I preferred the longer story "Snow and Shadow" to some of the shorter ones, where I wished she'd taken some of her ideas a few steps further than she did. This collection of stories is probably not everyone's cup of tea, but it you're in the mood for something different, this book will definitely fulfill that want.
October 13, 2016
It was... creepy, weird, and literary. A reasonable example of the species, as far as I could tell, and someone who *likes* creepy, weird, and literary will probably greatly enjoy it.
I don't.
Last story I read before giving up is kind of still giving me the heebies.
I received this book from Goodreads for free in exchange for a review, insert standard boilerplate here.
I don't.
Last story I read before giving up is kind of still giving me the heebies.
I received this book from Goodreads for free in exchange for a review, insert standard boilerplate here.
May 27, 2014
This is a such a great collection of short stories! It is really different from anything else you will ever read. It is filled with surreal and magical realism. You have to step outside the box before sitting down and reading this book.
June 13, 2015
3.5 stars
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