Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai – Ruiyan Xu

Read as part W of the “Along the Library Shelf” reading journey

Chosen because

The only X on the shelf and an intriguing title.

The Review

Li Jing is a success, running his own financial investment business in Shanghai, married to the attractive and intelligent Zhou Meiling with whom he has a young son.

Then, in a gas explosion, a shard of glass pierces his head and incapacitates the part of his brain that processes language into speech. As a result he can no longer speak his native Chinese but can utter a few words of the English he knew as a child in America, not used since.

This “Broca’s aphasia” is rare and a specialist neurologist, Dr Rosalyn Neil, is flown in from America to join the medical team treating Li Jing. She is glad to make the trip, leaving behind a recently failed marriage, but finds the culture shock (convincingly described) a struggle until some ex-pats take her in tow.

What follows, slowly but never dully, is an exploration of the importance of spoken language and the feeling of impotence that results from its loss. The effect on Li Jing’s business, built on his ability to charm his contacts and clients, could be catastrophic but it his relationship with Meiling that suffers most. His inability to communicate with her as of old, contrasts starkly with the growing ease with which he can connect, using his improving English, with Rosalyn.

Of course those who speak the same language (Rosalyn and her fellow westerners, Meiling and her father-in-law) often fail to communicate too, so this is not all about a rare medical condition but also about a general malaise.

Li Jing’s inexorable drift on the tide of language from east to west is told with empathy from all points of view by Ruiyan Xu (herself a mixture of the two cultures) to produce a thoughtful book that may lack action but is not without tension of the will he won’t he, will she won’t she, kind.

Read another?

Probably not – intense emotion is all very well but I like some light relief and a bit more to be happening in my books.

Red Mist – David Tomlinson

Louis Case’s size, strength and way with words suited his career choice of minder, but his anger management issues less so, and throwing a client out of a sixteen storey window brought it to a premature end and earned him a sabbatical at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

On release he finds therapy in painting pottery and leaning to play the guitar (in neither of which has he any talent) but when his music teacher, Clarissa Glendenning, is killed in a hit and run the old instincts take over and he plans retribution.

Moving swiftly and violently through his criminal and dodgy police contacts he tracks down the perpetrator while simultaneously putting on a memorial concert for Clarissa, performed by her hapless pupils (she seemed to specialise in teaching the talentless and the tone deaf). The climax of both the hunt and the concert involve significant spillage of blood.

Red Mist is short, concisely written, with some choice turns of phrase. The violence is mitigated by the black humour that courses through the book’s (well-opened) veins. I enjoyed it and recommend it as a good short read.

Tiny Sunbirds Far Away – Christie Watson

Part of the ‘Into and out of Africa’ reading journey.

Thirteen year-old Blessing’s privileged life in the well-heeled Ikeja suburb of Lagos comes to an abrupt halt when her mother finds her father ‘on top of another woman’. It is he that has the good job, money and position so Mama packs up Blessing and her elder brother Ezikiel, and heads back to her parent’s village deep in the (Niger) delta.

Blessing’s new life in her grandparents’ compound lacks the home comforts she is used to – electricity, running water, flush toilets, TV, and air-con, but in time she finds new emotional ties and cultural values that compensate.

But life on the delta is hard for her and her family. Little money means no electricity, sporadic schooling, basic food and the risk of running out of medication for the asthmatic and nut allergic Ezikiel (who goes hungry with virtually everything cooked in nut oil).

Mama’s search for work brings her into contact with the white oil-workers and executives, and her earnings grow suspiciously. Ezikiel takes a different view of the oil industry and leans towards the rebel groups that infest the riverbank. As for Blessing, she is taken under her grandmother’s wing and becomes her apprentice in her role as birth assistant (midwife).

It is through this role that she discovers the horrors of ‘cutting’ (female circumcision or female genital mutilation); seeing the traumatic effects on affected women come home to roost during childbirth.

Against this political, economic and cultural turbulence, home life goes on with relationships ebbing and flowing (much like a West African version of The Archers) until some climactic events shift it into a higher state of being. The outcomes stay uncertain to the end, but a plausible and satisfying resolution ensues.  

The book is well written, giving what seems a fairly balanced picture of Nigeria at the time (1990’s?); maybe a touch long, with for me too much detail on the pain, joys and drama of giving birth. But these are minor quibbles and do not detract from a good and, for me, unusual read.