Lovers in the Age of Indifference

by Xiaolu Guo

The lovers in the age of indifference are tough romantics from every corner of the planet: a marriage splinters during a game of mah jong; a depressed fiancée is lifted by a mid-air encounter with a Hollywood legend; a mountain keeper watches over a lonely temple but is perturbed when, finally, a visitor dares to arrive.

In this engagingly maverick collection of stories, writer and filmmaker Guo zooms into tender and surreal moments in the lives of lost souls and lovers, adrift between West and East. Her personal, provocative and charming fables capture the sense of alienation thrown up by life in the modern world, and we join her characters in their search for human contact - and love - in rapidly-changing landscapes all around the globe.

Genres: Short Stories, China, Fiction, 21st Century, Literary Fiction, Literature, British Literature

214 pages, Paperback

First published January 7, 2010

About the author

Xiaolu Guo (Simplified Chinese: 郭小櫓 pinyin:guō xiǎo lǔ, born 1973) is a Chinese novelist and filmmaker. She utilizes various media, including film and writing, to tell stories of alienation, introspection and tragedy, and to explore China's past, present and future in an increasingly connected world.

Her novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers was nominated for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. She was also the 2005 Pearl Award (UK) winner for Creative Excellence.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guo might seem a mainstream selection for such a shameless other-lover as me (although plunge into my back pages and you will find spoonfuls of populist hipsters), but this ex-pat Chinese novelist and short story writer (in the latter mode here) writes about the Chinese experience with a gentle comedy, a sharply observant eye, and lightly lyrical touch. So I approve. Her stories are sometimes too romantic and simple to stir me senseless, and unlike her novels, there’s less formal experiment happening here. Stories such as ‘Beijing’s Slowest Elevator’ about the prostitute life, or ‘An Internet Baby’ about the perils of raising a child in backbreaking Chinese work life bear fangs beneath their light tone. Guo makes use of media forms for several tales. ‘The Third Tree’ uses text messages spread over too many pages and ‘Address Unknown’ is a bleak one-way correspondence between a Chinese girl and her long-gone English lover. So I approve. Her latest novel I Am China (released in two days) sounds like a prize-winner and I am proud to have been a fan long before she was either profitable or popular.

[Gita Madhu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Xiaolu Guo’s Lovers in the Age of Indifference is a like a set of picture postcards. Mostly, short pieces. Most or all of the pieces could leave the unprepared or traditional reader at sea as they do not fall easily into the category of story. There is, often, no particular crisis nor any spectacular resolution. Look at it either as a series of sketches or as superb samples of the author’s talent with various genres.

The Mountain Keeper, the first story in this collection, is narrated in elegant strokes. It is almost like reading a typical Chinese painting.

Winter Worm Summer Weed is another little portrait. This one brings life to and colours an arid region and arid lives with a bold and refreshing indifference.

Beijing's Slowest Elevator toys with the life of a woman who works at a karaoke bar. She could be a prostitute of sorts but, to us, she emerges as one out of the teeming masses of China’s capital city. A longer creation, this story is divided into ten parts and each can stand on its own.

Lovers In The Age Of Indifference is bizarre and tender and faintly and deliciously creepy. I wonder if the author plans to expand on some of these pieces.

Junk Mail has left me scratching my head. Perhaps I’ve skimmed through too fast? Is this the gift of fame, that, once published, the publisher will accept all your scrawls? But that is unworthy of me. I also wonder how many have woven a tale out of the treasure trove we call “spam”.

Then The Game Begins returns us to lovers. Mah Jong forming the centrepiece, this sketch is delicately salacious and redolent with artful indifference.

Stateless, also, I confess, left me clueless. How is the protagonist? White or yellow or black or brown? Who is the girl? What is the story? It’s highly titillating and leaves you high and dry. I would have to read more of Xiaolu to understand this art of being such a tease!

An Internet Baby is hilariously tragic. It will pander to the preconceptions we are trained to have about China. It will feed and satiate that perception, while, I’m sure, the author smirks and snickers behind the curtains, content with our complacency.

The Dead Can Dance Heartbreak is a theme of several pieces in this collection and this one is a gem. Unforgivingly blunt, it captures the agony of rejection. It’s bound to strike a chord with habitual lovers. There is nothing quite as bleak as the end of love.

Beijing Morning Star The chief editor of a daily re-works a few pieces. Tongue very much in cheek, Xiaolu Guo crafts a universal piece. I dare anyone anywhere in the world to say “This is typical of China”!

Not all the stories adhere to the format of sketches. Into The World can earn anyone’s approval as a story. And what a story! Just as I appreciate Japanese authors all the more for being addicted to Japanese dramas, I do feel that I’m able to relish Xiaolu Guo so much the more thanks to having watched quite a few Chinese films in the past. I can’t think of any other people with such a predilection for irreverence. Confucianism and communism both conspired to create this outrageous brand of extreme and slapstick reality. Let me disabuse you, though: it’s an artful piece and very much in a traditional Chinese story mode.

Address Unknown Another in the heartbreak genre, this one reminds me of Jacques Prévert’s cruel Déjeuner du Matin. Those who have loved and lost have surely undergone this phase. There is, probably, nothing worse than the silence of a partner. The silence of death. The death of love.

A series of text messages, The Third Tree also uses the habit of the lover who cannot accept rejection, who still hopes into the deathly silence, who persists. It’s yet another instance where the author plays with formats. Now why can’t I try that! Why didn’t I think of it first!

Another libidinous story, Anywhere I Lay My Head indulges in a voyeuristic foray, tracing a day in the life of a woman as she leaves her partner for a tryst with an ex-lover. Her duplicity, like a cruel crust, remains unnoticed. Framed within mundane happenings, this faithlessness becomes more poignant than heartbreak.

Letters To A City Of Illusion And Hope is composed, as you’ve rightly guessed, of a few letters between partners. It’s left me wanting to read or, at least, read about, Griffin and Sabine. And it has revealed how widely read Xiaolu Guo surely is.

Today I Decide To Die One way we react to a breakup is suicide. This is, again, a tale of rejection, set amidst descriptive chatter.

I confess that I am yet to broach Flower Of Solitude. At a glance, I can tell that it is carved in the mould of Chinese legends and myths. I’m saving it for tonight.

This is not for the unadventurous nor the untrained, perhaps. Short stories are regarded as chocolate boxes, a whole made up of nibbles. Lovers in the Age of Indifference, though formed of bites, cold shoulders such an approach.

An absolute must for all wannabe writers.

[Freddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The individual pieces are about different things but linked together by a general sense of solitude and loneliness. Some stories are tragic while others feel more like slices of life. They manage to not be melodramatic, despite the content. Very good.

[Poonam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection of short stories is very easy to read and as it is said, a fast read. It has stories about Chinese urban life (tho is one story that refers to empty life in London) of alienation, displacement, love and survival. yet they are stories empty of love. The title story was bit let down. In fact most stories depict a defeatist sentiments, not necessarily with any conclusion.

I liked 'Beijing Morning Star' about a chief editor of a daily, 'Beijing's slowest elevator' about a woman who works in karaoke bar, 'Address unknown' about a Chinese woman writing to her lost English lover and 'Flower of solitude', a Chinese folksy tale. Some others failed to touch me. there was one a 'The Third Tree' written in text messages format, an interesting literary device.

What I like about book is the Chinese flavor, things like eating congee or rats, cucumber pickles and winter worm summer weed.

[Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I lost my bookmark upon finishing this. A small but irreplaceable loss that punctuates this book whose lovers lose everything and nothing.

Silly, but I wish I still had that bookmark, and its giver.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

A hit and miss collection of short stories that are occasionally heartbreaking but for the most part miss their mark. While still a fast, enjoyable read, it doesn't stand out amongst Guo's other work as it is neither as thought provoking nor as heartbreaking.

All that being said it was fast and I wasn't bored to the point of putting it down, just that I was expecting more from the author of my favourite book.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes! Finally a book to ignite my reading flame. This is a book of short stories, set in modern day China. It pans back and forth from destitute, rural Chinese life (working hard to get to the city), to dirty old Chinese city life (grey pollution and long working hours), which may reflect the binary reality of modern day China. There are also flights to Paris, London and Berlin to add more layers of interest.

Mix this with a search for love or understanding how to connect with other humans, and there plenty of startling moments which suggest philosophical thoughts about life itself. Only a skilled writer can create these moments through the medium of the short story, whilst still including those everyday moments which set the tone; eating congee, dreading starting a 12 hour shift at a Karoake parlour, feeling like you want to faint in the tube because you just forced yourself on your predatory Hungarian ex, or something inconsequential reminding you of Mao’s Little Red Book.

Love all of the feelings this book gave me 💯💯💯💯

[ttttooo”””’mmmmmm · Rating 4 out of 5]

the stories started off as relatively uninteresting, but got more and more relevant iykwim. i loved how many different ways of portraying a story were used. a few of the stories felt random and too short but they were outweighed by the good ones. probably a 3.8 ⭐️ kind of situation for me

[Moushumi Ghosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up the book because of the title. It's a brilliant title. The stories capture some of the existentialism that affects romance and love today. Some of the stories echo the fables of pre-cultural revolution China, some of them are Mao-era hangovers and some from the present age of international travel, the internet and email. It's a wide variety and Guo presents them in her own style. There are no happy endings, just satisfactory stories. The diasporic Chinese perspective - her own, obviously - is exploited in great detail. But I can't seem to shake off the feeling that something was missing.

[Naga · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely book, small surprises with every story. The emotions are very new and contemporary and yet very old. I loved the pace and rhythm of this book, its like being on a ride which is carefully orchestrated. More than the individual story, it is this rhythm that makes you look forward to the next swoop or the next rise. And although each story is very particular, there is echo in me, a resonance.

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you want fiction about contemporary life in China, read Guo -- not Ha Jin or Yiyun Li. (Not that they're bad writers.) Guo writes with a straight-faced, unsentimental (well, except some of her love stories) emptiness that rings true to me. This is my favorite book of hers I've read. It's a short story collection -- mostly very short, and sad. Worth reading.

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This book is squarely set in the modern world. Full of displacement, alienation and not much love except for yearning for it. The characters are from all over China and the stories are short but concise.
read more: http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.co.uk...

[ChromaLadyTones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like stories about individuals wandering the mythical wildernesses of China. I like stories about people who live on the moon, and who pick jasmine petals. I also like Guo's drudgingly realistic descriptions of London and East London. I believe her when she takes on women protagonists. Good brain entering.

[Richie · Rating 4 out of 5]

She really links the urban and pastoral settings in these stories, and captures the brutal reality of what it means to become a part of larger society. Some of the stories are better than others, but overall she creates a collection of stories that make you feel little empty but a little relieved at the same time.

[ember x · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps I'd set myself up for a meh experience, because I've never gotten satisfaction from shortstories.

But, I chose to read this because I wanted a first taste to author Guo Xiaolu, and this led to go onto reading A Concise Chinese-english Dictionary for lovers. And it is a delight.

[Wsclai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is this inevitable sense of melancholy, loss and indifference the by-product of rapid economic growth in China? The book is humourous sometimes, but sad always.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked these short stories that connected me with modern-day Chinese lives.

[Namitha · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring . It's only 200 pages yet it was so hard to stick around till the end.

[Baljit · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were some stories that hit home more than others, eg The Internet Baby and Stateless, but overall the tone is rather gloomy.

[Neringa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guo's another face of writing. High value literary fiction. Enjoyed every bit of each story. Marvellous and highly recommended.

[Alka · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got misled by the depth of the first book of this author. this, second book, is a let down. has short stories, most of which are quite pedestrian.

[Mona · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5*

[Rebecca Fung · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is about a 2.5 from me. I wish I could give half stars, especially for collections like this. It was very hit and miss and inconsistent in how I felt about it, and all up let's say it didn't have a strong impact on me and I was tempted to say 2-star because of that. On the other hand there were some good pieces and I liked the variety of love stories, the experiments with different styles, the fact that the stories about love gave very different views of love.

I felt they needed to be more impactful, perhaps the idea of "indifference" was taken way too far! Most of the characters did not really stand out to me. However little cultural references did work well and it was enjoyable reading these little tidbits of Chinese culture woven through the love stories.

[sabrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though very dramatic things do happen in this book, the narratives never feel as if they greatly rise or fall. To me, this book is like a smattering of all the well-known 2000s Chinese new-wave cinema films. It’s an interesting book of zeitgeist / an obvious marker of its time and place — it really captures that specific helpless, yet translucent feeling well. Xiaolu Guo puts out a fair bit of political jabs throughout this book, and whether or not you agree, it’s amusing to read. I really enjoyed and felt this book, but it still feels very hazy to me.

[Vishualee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book represents a melange of emotions, and all of the stories in it share the same feeling - as if they are are set in the moment.

The stories are unique, brimming with all different kinds of experiences that discuss the lives of the Chinese abroad and home. Some of them are narrated in different formats - text messages, emails, letters, and others - plain narration.. The story I liked the best was "Stateless", which I could relate to. It was like as if the author was talking about me.

[lukoto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable! I regain the feeling of reading Guo's early short story collection in Chinese – 梦中或不是梦中的飞行, while her collection stories of "lovers" are more about the theme of "(not) to be loved". Her style is very like her ways of interweaving stories in Chinese: distanced, black humour, theatric. Those female characters are lonely, detached, dependent, bewildered in relationship with both men and this world.

[Sean Harding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guo Greats #4
A collection of stories from Guo, is of course like nearly all collections uneven in how you engage with them, but it is a decent set and some really interesting ones, and that title is pretty apt for life in today's modern shallow world.

[Lyana Margareth · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Sabrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful (Love) stories, some with some without endings, mostly sad and some depressing. I enjoyed to read these snippets of ones life.

[Femi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess I'd rate this higher if only I were a little empty when I was reading this.