The Jade Peony

Read on recommendation.

The Jade Peony, by Wayson Choy

This book started off pretty slow. I was a little turned off by the fact that the characters spoke Cantonese as opposed to Mandarin, so I wasn't always sure what they were saying, but the translations helped for sure. I didn't like that when I sounded out the phonetic spellings of the Chinese in my head, it didn't sound like words that I new, but as soon as I read on a bit and saw the translation, for the most part, I could go back and give the Chinese a Cantonese slant (or at least what I thought was Cantonese) and could often understand it. For the phrases that weren't translated, I couldn't always figure out what they were saying, which was a little annoying to me, but I figured that most people reading this book don't know Cantonese so it shouldn't be a roadblock that I don't understand everything that was being said. I think the fact that it was three little stories threw me off. In term of, "what's the point of the book as a whole?". After awhile, I just accepted that I was reading words, and experiences of three different people, and that their stories didn't HAVE to relate to one another. The first two stories weren't bad (once I got into it), but the third, I thought was a little dull. I had to flip through the last one a little bit. Especially at the very end. I guess I could relate (or at least understand) the cultural issues that were talked about, so that was nice.
In the end, this book wasn't horrible, yet another OK book. The fact that it ended on such a low note can't be a good thing.