What do you think?
Rate this book
Frontier
New Novel from the Winner of the 2015 Best Translated Book Award Introduction by Porochista Khakpour. "One of the most raved-about works of translated fiction this year"―Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorwire Frontier opens with the story of Liujin, a young woman heading out on her own to create her own life in Pebble Town, a somewhat surreal place at the base of Snow Mountain where wolves roam the streets and certain enlightened individuals can see and enter a paradisiacal garden. Exploring life in this city (or in the frontier) through the viewpoint of a dozen different characters, some simple, some profound, Can Xue's latest novel attempts to unify the grand opposites of life--barbarism and civilization, the spiritual and the material, the mundane and the sublime, beauty and death, Eastern and Western cultures. A layered, multifaceted masterpiece from the 2015 winner of the Best Translated Book Award, Frontier exemplifies John Darnielle's statement that Can Xue's books read "as if dreams had invaded the physical world." Can Xue is a pseudonym meaning "dirty snow, leftover snow." She learned English on her own and has written books on Borges, Shakespeare, and Dante. Her publications in English include The Embroidered Shoes , Five Spice Street , Vertical Motion , and The Last Lover , which won the 2015 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction. Karen Gernant is a professor emerita of Chinese history at Southern Oregon University. She translates in collaboration with Chen Zeping. Chen Zeping is a professor of Chinese linguistics at Fujian Teachers' University, and has collaborated with Karen Gernant on more than ten translations. Porochista Khakpour is the author of two novels, Sons and Other Flammable Objects and The Last Illusion .
361 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
About the author
Can Xue
89 books295 followers残雪
Can Xue (Chinese: 残雪; pinyin: Cán Xuĕ), née Deng Xiaohua (Chinese: 邓小华), is a Chinese avant-garde fiction writer, literary critic, and tailor. She was born May 30, 1953 in Changsha, Hunan, China. Her family was severely persecuted following her father being labeled an ultra-rightist in the Anti-rightist Movement of 1957. Her writing, which consists mostly of short fiction, breaks with the realism of earlier modern Chinese writers. She has also written novels, novellas, and literary criticisms of the work of Dante, Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka. Some of her fiction has been translated and published in English.
(from Wikipedia)
Can Xue (Chinese: 残雪; pinyin: Cán Xuĕ), née Deng Xiaohua (Chinese: 邓小华), is a Chinese avant-garde fiction writer, literary critic, and tailor. She was born May 30, 1953 in Changsha, Hunan, China. Her family was severely persecuted following her father being labeled an ultra-rightist in the Anti-rightist Movement of 1957. Her writing, which consists mostly of short fiction, breaks with the realism of earlier modern Chinese writers. She has also written novels, novellas, and literary criticisms of the work of Dante, Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka. Some of her fiction has been translated and published in English.
(from Wikipedia)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 95 reviews
July 8, 2024
The NYTimes asked a bunch of people to name the top 10 books of the 21st century and I thought hmm what are my top 10 and there it was in my head. Frontier. One of the most glorious confusing joyful reads of my entire life. Thank you Karen Gernant for translating these amazing words and making this novel available to me in my native language.
Here is the rest of my personal top 10 list, as of July 8 2024.
Here is the rest of my personal top 10 list, as of July 8 2024.
June 9, 2017
Can Xue imagine(s) an airtight surreal alt-real populated by headless men, wolves and geckos, shifting mountains, and a Design Institute that serves no real function(?). In Frontier, China’s “premier writer of the avant-garde, an experimental trickster” (Porochista Khakpour) creates a striking sequence of happenings in the lives various unusuals, foremost of whom is the wild Liujin. Xue calls her style “material writing”, and takes “our Great Nature, especially our dark Earth Mother”, as her subject. The landscape and the characters are entwined in mysterious and inexplicable ways, and across the novel time, place, people, and events are woven together in a timeless flux. The novel’s impish fluidity and improvisation that keeps the reader charmed, amused, and ensorcelled. Unique.
July 19, 2017
Reading Frontier is a bit like watching a very large polaroid form its image slowly over a very extended period of time. At first all is fuzzy. The people in the picture, and the events surrounding them, seem like arbitrary blurs with little connection or resolution. Over the course of the novel, these shapes take on increasing detail and depth, and the spaces between them fill in so that an overarching organization can be detected. Hundreds of pages pass first -- it's a slow process, you might think of setting this novel aside and moving on to something else, but you press on, trying to make out the emerging image. Then, you look again and these vague shapes have become real in some way. What's more, you realize that they always were. You just couldn't see it before. Suddenly you want to spend a little longer with these lives, Liujin and Roy, Amy and Qi-Ming, but already the image has set, the pattern revealed, detailed but not without remaining ambiguity, and there will be no more. However, the sense may linger that the process of increasing resolution has continued elsewhere, off the page. These lives go on without you.
I really did almost give up. Can Xue's surreal, liminal community seemed like somewhere I'd clearly want to spend time, but takes a lot of time and effort for the book to develop a kind of cohesion. Not that everything makes sense or comes together in the end either. There are internal threads, but no, this is a novel of strange moments, fragmentary stories and isolated people, and it defies rational order. Or its orders are hard to detect besides in broad strokes. Could it have been improvised? Still: we have a yearning. People seek connection, watch the animal world, and seek earthy paradise that may not be real. Or may instead be under our noses all along. Can Xue's trick is make all this uncertainty and irresolution feel like some real and human thing in spite of itself. Just barely, only late in the process, and after threatening not to at all turns.
I really did almost give up. Can Xue's surreal, liminal community seemed like somewhere I'd clearly want to spend time, but takes a lot of time and effort for the book to develop a kind of cohesion. Not that everything makes sense or comes together in the end either. There are internal threads, but no, this is a novel of strange moments, fragmentary stories and isolated people, and it defies rational order. Or its orders are hard to detect besides in broad strokes. Could it have been improvised? Still: we have a yearning. People seek connection, watch the animal world, and seek earthy paradise that may not be real. Or may instead be under our noses all along. Can Xue's trick is make all this uncertainty and irresolution feel like some real and human thing in spite of itself. Just barely, only late in the process, and after threatening not to at all turns.
May 30, 2022
"Una vez desapareció de su vista el último vagón del tren, el pueblucho de la frontera hizo de repente su aparición a lo lejos, ante sus ojos, como si de un fantasma se tratase."
Es curioso como se encadenan ciertas lecturas, sin tenerlo planeado me he sumergido en La Frontera después de venir de Los anillos de Saturno, ambas lecturas tienen algo en común, una travesía a través de un paisaje fantasmal u onírico. Salvando las distancias, porque aunque no tiene nada que ver Sebald con Can Xue, si que tengo que decir que lo he disfrutado casi de la misma forma, dejándome llevar. La lectura de esta autora china que no conocía, aunque si había oído mucho hablar de ella (¡¡por fín está llegando a España!!), se ha convertido en una auténtica experiencia, a veces densa, en otras hechizante y finalmente impactante. No es una novela fácil porque el argumento fluctúa cambiando continuamene casi experimentando con la forma pero llegado un punto, si consigues conectar, se puede convertir en toda una experiencia casi intuítiva.
"-Estoy confundida y no llego a aclararme. ¿A qué se debe?... Este lugar ejerce mucha atracción sobre mi persona. ¿Has visto los halcones en el cielo? Vuelan y se paran, retoman el vuelo y vuelven a pararse en una constante indefinición de su trayectoria, y nada llega a concretarse... Todo en la frontera parece un momento suspendido en el espacio y el tiempo ¿no crees?"
Aunque en La frontera hay una clara protagonista femenina, Liu Jin, una vendedora de telas que vuelve al pueblo fronterizo donde había vivido con sus padres muchos años atrás, yo diría más bien que es una novela coral, donde muchos personajes entran y salen de la puesta en escena, remarcando esta visión global del pueblo o del mundo como alegoría. Las primeras páginas de esta novela ya sientan las bases sobre el hechizo que ejerce este pueblo fronterizo, un lugar en ninguna parte, un limbo perdido, entre la realidad y la ¿consciencia?…
"También recordaba cuando ellos prepararon las maletas para llevarla a ese pueblo fronterizo. No supo entonces por qué la habían trasladado a ese lugar lejos de la civilización, y nunca lo llegó a saber. Ahora que había regresado recordaba las primeras noches tras su llegada y el murmullo de las hojas de los álamos junto al río, que era como una explosión repentina con diferentes niveles de intensidad y duración.
(...)
"Hu Shan y su esposa permanecían algo asustados debajo de los árboles, con las maletas a sus pies. Ese pueblo fronterizo excedía sus expectativas y simplemente les dejó una impresión de un lugar de ficción, como si hubiesen visitado Xanadú."
No solo Liu Jin sino continuamente están llegando personajes al pueblo fronterizo de Guijarro, ninguno tiene una conciencia real de cómo y por qué llegó, pero el pueblo ejerce una extraña fascinación a todos los que llegan: ellas se vuelven más hermosas, los lobos campan a sus anchas, un pozo de aguas intranquilas y voces soterradas, de vez en cuando un atisbo del leopardo de las nieves y siempre de fondo la montaña de las nieves con el viento que proviene de allí. Cada capítulo está dedicado a un personaje, o a una pareja de personajes, donde se revela cuando llegaron y su interacción, algunas veces la comunicación se hace difícil en otros momentos las relaciones se afianzan:
"Por ejemplo, el tío Qui Ming se hizo amigo de ella de esa manera: desde la sombra hacia la luz, pero gradualmente y sin prisas."
Pero no son solo estos personajes el centro de la novela sino los edificios, el Instituto de Arquitectura y Diseño, o las habitaciones que algunas son como celdas, y otras tienen una especie de puerta a otro mundo, el jardín botánico que aparece y desaparece, los bosques, la montaña de las nieves... El pueblo fronterizo en el que conviven está continuamente cambiando, transformándose; aparentemente nunca sucede nada y sin embargo es a través de las vivencias de sus personajes cuando nos damos cuenta que no es necesario un argumento lineal para contar una historia. Can Xue de alguna forma está hablándonos de la realidad histórica de China y extrapolándola a este mundo de ensueño que ha creado a través de toda una simbologia que me ha fascinado e intuyo que esta ficción mágica y surrealista tenga que ver con la pesadilla de ese pasado histórico que vivió entre 1966 y 1976 .
"En ese momento preciso escribió la última frase de la carta, y todavía podía oír los latidos acelerados de su corazón. Sintió que el pueblo fronterizo, Guijarro, era un pueblo dormido al mismo tiempo que un lugar aún por ser descubierto. Cada día había individuos y objetos que traía el viento. Así era: el viento traía con él a diario cosas extraordinarias y maravillosas."
La edición de Hermida Editores es un lujazo, lo tengo que decir, sobre todo por esas notas continuamente clarificando los simbolismos y el mundo interior de Can Xue. La traducción es de Blas Piñero. Una joya.
"Can Xue, es el seudónimo literario elegido por Deng Xiaohua, que se puede traducir como “la nieve que se está deshaciendo y que está sucia”, es decir de una pureza corrompida o que se está perdiendo." (Nota 253)
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2022...
Es curioso como se encadenan ciertas lecturas, sin tenerlo planeado me he sumergido en La Frontera después de venir de Los anillos de Saturno, ambas lecturas tienen algo en común, una travesía a través de un paisaje fantasmal u onírico. Salvando las distancias, porque aunque no tiene nada que ver Sebald con Can Xue, si que tengo que decir que lo he disfrutado casi de la misma forma, dejándome llevar. La lectura de esta autora china que no conocía, aunque si había oído mucho hablar de ella (¡¡por fín está llegando a España!!), se ha convertido en una auténtica experiencia, a veces densa, en otras hechizante y finalmente impactante. No es una novela fácil porque el argumento fluctúa cambiando continuamene casi experimentando con la forma pero llegado un punto, si consigues conectar, se puede convertir en toda una experiencia casi intuítiva.
"-Estoy confundida y no llego a aclararme. ¿A qué se debe?... Este lugar ejerce mucha atracción sobre mi persona. ¿Has visto los halcones en el cielo? Vuelan y se paran, retoman el vuelo y vuelven a pararse en una constante indefinición de su trayectoria, y nada llega a concretarse... Todo en la frontera parece un momento suspendido en el espacio y el tiempo ¿no crees?"
Aunque en La frontera hay una clara protagonista femenina, Liu Jin, una vendedora de telas que vuelve al pueblo fronterizo donde había vivido con sus padres muchos años atrás, yo diría más bien que es una novela coral, donde muchos personajes entran y salen de la puesta en escena, remarcando esta visión global del pueblo o del mundo como alegoría. Las primeras páginas de esta novela ya sientan las bases sobre el hechizo que ejerce este pueblo fronterizo, un lugar en ninguna parte, un limbo perdido, entre la realidad y la ¿consciencia?…
"También recordaba cuando ellos prepararon las maletas para llevarla a ese pueblo fronterizo. No supo entonces por qué la habían trasladado a ese lugar lejos de la civilización, y nunca lo llegó a saber. Ahora que había regresado recordaba las primeras noches tras su llegada y el murmullo de las hojas de los álamos junto al río, que era como una explosión repentina con diferentes niveles de intensidad y duración.
(...)
"Hu Shan y su esposa permanecían algo asustados debajo de los árboles, con las maletas a sus pies. Ese pueblo fronterizo excedía sus expectativas y simplemente les dejó una impresión de un lugar de ficción, como si hubiesen visitado Xanadú."
No solo Liu Jin sino continuamente están llegando personajes al pueblo fronterizo de Guijarro, ninguno tiene una conciencia real de cómo y por qué llegó, pero el pueblo ejerce una extraña fascinación a todos los que llegan: ellas se vuelven más hermosas, los lobos campan a sus anchas, un pozo de aguas intranquilas y voces soterradas, de vez en cuando un atisbo del leopardo de las nieves y siempre de fondo la montaña de las nieves con el viento que proviene de allí. Cada capítulo está dedicado a un personaje, o a una pareja de personajes, donde se revela cuando llegaron y su interacción, algunas veces la comunicación se hace difícil en otros momentos las relaciones se afianzan:
"Por ejemplo, el tío Qui Ming se hizo amigo de ella de esa manera: desde la sombra hacia la luz, pero gradualmente y sin prisas."
Pero no son solo estos personajes el centro de la novela sino los edificios, el Instituto de Arquitectura y Diseño, o las habitaciones que algunas son como celdas, y otras tienen una especie de puerta a otro mundo, el jardín botánico que aparece y desaparece, los bosques, la montaña de las nieves... El pueblo fronterizo en el que conviven está continuamente cambiando, transformándose; aparentemente nunca sucede nada y sin embargo es a través de las vivencias de sus personajes cuando nos damos cuenta que no es necesario un argumento lineal para contar una historia. Can Xue de alguna forma está hablándonos de la realidad histórica de China y extrapolándola a este mundo de ensueño que ha creado a través de toda una simbologia que me ha fascinado e intuyo que esta ficción mágica y surrealista tenga que ver con la pesadilla de ese pasado histórico que vivió entre 1966 y 1976 .
"En ese momento preciso escribió la última frase de la carta, y todavía podía oír los latidos acelerados de su corazón. Sintió que el pueblo fronterizo, Guijarro, era un pueblo dormido al mismo tiempo que un lugar aún por ser descubierto. Cada día había individuos y objetos que traía el viento. Así era: el viento traía con él a diario cosas extraordinarias y maravillosas."
La edición de Hermida Editores es un lujazo, lo tengo que decir, sobre todo por esas notas continuamente clarificando los simbolismos y el mundo interior de Can Xue. La traducción es de Blas Piñero. Una joya.
"Can Xue, es el seudónimo literario elegido por Deng Xiaohua, que se puede traducir como “la nieve que se está deshaciendo y que está sucia”, es decir de una pureza corrompida o que se está perdiendo." (Nota 253)
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2022...
April 10, 2017
R Can Xue is not an easy read, not because her language or concepts are difficult but because she challenges what is expected in narrative form and structure. I have a detailed review published at Numero Cinq. See: http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2017/04...
June 15, 2017
I've held off writing this review for a day, hoping it would become clearer to me how to describe this book. But alas nothing has struck me as comprehensible. Perhaps that's to be expected, as ultimately I did not find this novel to be comprehensible, at least in any way I would normally describe a novel. Many reviewers turn to the quote from John Darnielle on the back of the book -- "Can Xue's books read 'as if dreams had invaded the physical world.'" It is an excellent description of how the book reads, just as I found the only book I've read by Darnielle to read -- like a bad dream.
The primary character is Liujin. The book begins and ends with her point of view when she is about 35. And we see her often throughout the book -- sometimes at her current age, sometimes as a baby, and sometimes as a young girl. Yes, time is rather elusive in this book -- for reader and characters it seemed to me. People appear and disappear and then reappear again. Sometimes they reappear and you did not even know they had disappeared until they are back. At times I found myself enjoying getting different characters view of the same incident. But then something weird would happen and I was once again scratching my head.
The writing (or perhaps better stated, the translation) was easy to read. The sentences were well-crafted. But putting it all together was a challenge. I read that the author just writes and does not edit. And that is easy to believe! On the back cover, the book is described as attempting "to unify grand opposites of life -- barbarism and civilization, the spiritual and the material, the mundane and the sublime, beauty and death, Eastern and Western civilization." I can see that these topics (other than Eastern and Western civilization) are present but after reading the book, I had no sense that the author was attempting to unify them. I look forward to the August discussion of this book in the GR Newest Literary Fiction group.
The primary character is Liujin. The book begins and ends with her point of view when she is about 35. And we see her often throughout the book -- sometimes at her current age, sometimes as a baby, and sometimes as a young girl. Yes, time is rather elusive in this book -- for reader and characters it seemed to me. People appear and disappear and then reappear again. Sometimes they reappear and you did not even know they had disappeared until they are back. At times I found myself enjoying getting different characters view of the same incident. But then something weird would happen and I was once again scratching my head.
The writing (or perhaps better stated, the translation) was easy to read. The sentences were well-crafted. But putting it all together was a challenge. I read that the author just writes and does not edit. And that is easy to believe! On the back cover, the book is described as attempting "to unify grand opposites of life -- barbarism and civilization, the spiritual and the material, the mundane and the sublime, beauty and death, Eastern and Western civilization." I can see that these topics (other than Eastern and Western civilization) are present but after reading the book, I had no sense that the author was attempting to unify them. I look forward to the August discussion of this book in the GR Newest Literary Fiction group.
October 9, 2017
Frontier is an experimental novel by Chinese writer Can Xue set in on the northern border in Pebble Town, an odd city dominated by the mysterious Design Institute. Each chapter follows a different character or group of characters, but the story centers on Liujin, a woman living on her own since her parents retired to Smoke City. As she, and those she comes into contact with, go about their lives, odd things happen.
Frontier is described as surreal and there is a folk tale feel to this novel, with wolves and snow leopards wandering through the marketplace, a garden floats and young woman's hand occasionally transforms into a scythe. Sometimes the bizarre is remarked upon, at least by newcomers, but mostly the residents of Pebble Town continue to live their odd lives and think their random thoughts. Most of the book has the feeling of a dream sequence, where events occur unrelated to the events that precede or follow. Time and space are equally unstable.
This book defeated me. I read the entire thing, but each new, weird occurrence left me increasingly disconnected from whatever Can Xue was trying to communicate. The writing was stilted and varied between short lyrical segments interspersed with jarring, technical-feeling language. I'm uncertain of what was the intention of the author and what is the result of a tone-deaf translation. I have other issues with the translation, which leads me to think that the translators did the author a disservice beginning with the odd decision to give half of the characters random westernized names. What I'm left with is having slogged through a novel-length first draft of someone's dream. I suspect that had I a decent knowledge of modern Chinese literature and folklore, or had read this as part of a class, I might have been able to find the substance in this vaporous vision. It was interesting to venture so far from what I usually read, but I can't call the experience a rewarding one.
Frontier is described as surreal and there is a folk tale feel to this novel, with wolves and snow leopards wandering through the marketplace, a garden floats and young woman's hand occasionally transforms into a scythe. Sometimes the bizarre is remarked upon, at least by newcomers, but mostly the residents of Pebble Town continue to live their odd lives and think their random thoughts. Most of the book has the feeling of a dream sequence, where events occur unrelated to the events that precede or follow. Time and space are equally unstable.
This book defeated me. I read the entire thing, but each new, weird occurrence left me increasingly disconnected from whatever Can Xue was trying to communicate. The writing was stilted and varied between short lyrical segments interspersed with jarring, technical-feeling language. I'm uncertain of what was the intention of the author and what is the result of a tone-deaf translation. I have other issues with the translation, which leads me to think that the translators did the author a disservice beginning with the odd decision to give half of the characters random westernized names. What I'm left with is having slogged through a novel-length first draft of someone's dream. I suspect that had I a decent knowledge of modern Chinese literature and folklore, or had read this as part of a class, I might have been able to find the substance in this vaporous vision. It was interesting to venture so far from what I usually read, but I can't call the experience a rewarding one.
June 13, 2022
Lo siento mucho pero dejo este libro. Me ha decepcionado mucho lo poco que me ha gustado y lo poco que he podido disfrutar estas 600 páginas que me han parecido interminables. Me he saltado algunos cachos pero es que tampoco importa mucho, porque son completamente inconexos y no hay un hilo conductor más allá de la existencia de los mismos personajes durante todo el libro.
Cuando leí en una de las reseñas que leer a Can Xue era como leer los sueños no mentían. Leer el libro es como intentar seguir una mosca con los ojos, desaparece frente a ti, vuelve a aparecer unos metros más allá y de nuevo se deshace sin ver siquiera a dónde iba. En el libro no ocurre necesariamente nada, pero no por ello es un mal libro, es más bien la increíble dificultad que me causa el seguir esa nada para encontrar una bonita estampa de un párrafo cada 30 páginas.
Los personajes tampoco me han entusiasmado y la enorme cantidad de metáforas por metro cuadrado especialmente en la primera mitad hacen de este libro un cursillo de folklore chino en esteroides. En resumen, es un mal libro para iniciarse en la literatura china, aunque no por ello lo rechazo completamente. Espero volver algún día a este obeso compañero y reencontrarlo de buena gana.
Cuando leí en una de las reseñas que leer a Can Xue era como leer los sueños no mentían. Leer el libro es como intentar seguir una mosca con los ojos, desaparece frente a ti, vuelve a aparecer unos metros más allá y de nuevo se deshace sin ver siquiera a dónde iba. En el libro no ocurre necesariamente nada, pero no por ello es un mal libro, es más bien la increíble dificultad que me causa el seguir esa nada para encontrar una bonita estampa de un párrafo cada 30 páginas.
Los personajes tampoco me han entusiasmado y la enorme cantidad de metáforas por metro cuadrado especialmente en la primera mitad hacen de este libro un cursillo de folklore chino en esteroides. En resumen, es un mal libro para iniciarse en la literatura china, aunque no por ello lo rechazo completamente. Espero volver algún día a este obeso compañero y reencontrarlo de buena gana.
Read
December 19, 2023Can Xue? Can Xue? She was here a minute ago by the well… Now? Nothing here but the mounds of peppered snow plowed into giant walls punctuating a desolate parking lot. Liujin will know where she is. I knocked at her door as I could still see a light inside. She answered but clearly could not see me. This is the thing I hate about Pebble Town: Everyone here thinks they’re an enigma wrapped up in fulltime employment and blessed by overly domesticated wildlife. I walked back and forth along the main road. Several times I thought I saw a garden. Old men sat on walls, waxing poetic about textiles and the irreducibility of female logic. I went to the station to wait for the train to vanish. When it did, I purchased a ticket and walked back to the Design Institute. I slept in the grass until the sound of the frogs made my head start to break into little pieces. As the sun rose, I realized I would never be able to leave this place.
December 19, 2021
Ko gero, giliausią įspūdį šiais metais palikusi knyga.
Literatūroje ne taip jau retai pasitaiko, kad būtų kuriamas sapniškas pasaulis, bet pirmąsyk jį mačiau sukurtą taip gerai. Pasakojimas iš dalies realistinis, bet pilnas keistų nepaaiškinamų detalių, staiga iškylantys prisiminimai, kurie prieštarauja kitiems prisiminimams, pasakojimo linijos niekada nesusiveda į vieną paaiškinimą, bet viskas persmelkta sapnui būdingo svarbos pojūčio, štai taip:
Jei iš šių citatų atrodo, kad "kas per nesąmonė", tai knygos neskaitykit, nes visa knyga tokia.
O jei citatos patiko, tai knygą labai rekomenduoju.
Literatūroje ne taip jau retai pasitaiko, kad būtų kuriamas sapniškas pasaulis, bet pirmąsyk jį mačiau sukurtą taip gerai. Pasakojimas iš dalies realistinis, bet pilnas keistų nepaaiškinamų detalių, staiga iškylantys prisiminimai, kurie prieštarauja kitiems prisiminimams, pasakojimo linijos niekada nesusiveda į vieną paaiškinimą, bet viskas persmelkta sapnui būdingo svarbos pojūčio, štai taip:
"I couldn't sleep, anyhow, so I'm keeping watch here. I want to see if anything sneaks out through this hole"
"Dad, you must mean comes in."
"No, I meant what I said - sneaks out. There are some weird creatures in this house. I'm not sure what they are."
His silhouette moved up and down, as though he were drifting in the dark. He was actually whistling; maybe he had drunk too much. Liujin heard him whistle a children's song. He was very good at it and it was pleasant to listen to. A swarm of white-winged insects flew around the dim light, as if they were dancing along with the tune. Liujin could now see his head, but his face was still a blur. <...>
Liujin kept wanting to see the manager's face, but for some reason, the moment her gaze rested there, she began feeling dizzy. She tried to cough off the dizziness, tried every way to concentrate. For a moment, she vaguely saw a farmer's face. Smoke from burning wood seeped from his wrinkles.
He stretched out his hand and plucked a little black turtle from the air.
Ying stood up and circled around to the back of the rock wall. Liujin heard a soft "kacha" sound, and Ying disappeared. She touched that wall for a long time. The electric current from inside the concave surface pushed her hands away time and again. The rocks smelled very good, not like the usual smell of rocks.
Jei iš šių citatų atrodo, kad "kas per nesąmonė", tai knygos neskaitykit, nes visa knyga tokia.
O jei citatos patiko, tai knygą labai rekomenduoju.
January 7, 2018
Imagine that the show "Twin Peaks" was a 64-year old Chinese woman who was sitting next to you in your booth at a mescaline club in an alternate reality, and you would have "Frontier".
The author, Can Xue (a clever pseudonym which means "dirty, leftover snow"), is actually a 64-year old Chinese woman and very well might be from an alternate reality. Or at least writes from one right at you.
This is a work of the kind of weird, headlong, heady genius that most people would sniff at. For instance, if you read in public on purpose behind a cup with your name or initials written on it, you probably wouldn't like this book. If you like linear narratives and ill-fitting pants, you probably wouldn't like this book. If you're afraid of wolves haunting the streets of Pebble Town while the Design Institute near the snow mountain devours the maybe-dead into questionable lifeworks and hotels stock the beds with centipedes and the hospitals stock themselves with poisonous butterflies, then you probably WOULD like this work.
The author, Can Xue (a clever pseudonym which means "dirty, leftover snow"), is actually a 64-year old Chinese woman and very well might be from an alternate reality. Or at least writes from one right at you.
This is a work of the kind of weird, headlong, heady genius that most people would sniff at. For instance, if you read in public on purpose behind a cup with your name or initials written on it, you probably wouldn't like this book. If you like linear narratives and ill-fitting pants, you probably wouldn't like this book. If you're afraid of wolves haunting the streets of Pebble Town while the Design Institute near the snow mountain devours the maybe-dead into questionable lifeworks and hotels stock the beds with centipedes and the hospitals stock themselves with poisonous butterflies, then you probably WOULD like this work.
January 25, 2021
Global Read Challenge 41: China
I really liked it, but it is super out there.. maybe Ishiguro and Kafka on steroids. There were definitely times when it dragged, but overall I'm really glad I read it and there's a lot of imagery that will stay with me.
I really liked it, but it is super out there.. maybe Ishiguro and Kafka on steroids. There were definitely times when it dragged, but overall I'm really glad I read it and there's a lot of imagery that will stay with me.
February 22, 2021
I found 边疆 (Frontier) to be a huge waste of time. The first few chapters were intriguing, though weird, but as the book progressed it completely failed to develop in any interesting ways, and simply repeated ad naseam the same kind of banal incoherence over and over again.
I understood going in that this would not be a traditional novel. It's extremely surreal, and I guess its point is more to convey atmosphere or provoke reflection than to tell a story. But in order to sustain a reader's interest across several hundred pages, I think you need more than just vague, tantalizing weirdness. Can Xue didn't deliver anything more than that.
The characters, for instance, weren't compelling at all. They neither felt real enough to relate to, nor did they exemplify any ideas or archetypes strongly enough to be interesting in that respect. They were just empty shells with some dialog attached. If you were to ask me, for instance, what particular qualities Liujin had (who was, if not the "main character", at least the one who took up the majority of the book) or what distinguished her from any of the others, I would be hard pressed to give you any kind of answer. And the same goes for most of the others. I can tell you some things they did or things that happened to them, but I couldn't tell you what motivated them or what kind of people they were, with a few exceptions. Those exceptions weren't frequent or strong enough to redeem the book.
They all have the same dull conversations with random leaps, that end up going nowhere. They are always exclaiming things without much pretext in the story to explain why they suddenly exclaim those things. And the author constantly asserts that they have emotional reactions, again, without much justification or explanation of why they are having these reactions. Passages that go something like this:
Seriously, that's what the writing is like in this book. Yes, there are some deeper sounding allusions and mysteries, like the strange garden, the nature of the Design Institute's Director, and such, but in the end none of it goes anywhere, and it's never interesting enough to feel very engaged by it.
It's kind of like reading someone's unedited dream journal. I've been writing down my dreams for 25 years, over hundreds of pages, and though some of them are really interesting, many are not, and even I can get bored re-reading them. Many of them only hold interest for me precisely because they were my dreams. Someone else reading straight through them would likely find an amusing section here or there, but overall be bored by too many details that are mostly mundane and nonsensical.
That captures the atmosphere of Frontier perfectly I think. Mundane and nonsensical, with a few alluring images that crop up here and there, but never connect into anything satisfying, so that towards the end, I was more annoyed by the book than anything else, and just wanted to finish it so I could move on to something else.
I heard it said that Can Xue claims she writes in a continuous stream without any editing. My impression from this book is that she doesn't do much planning, either. To me, this is a grave insult to the reader. This is a novel, not a poem. A work of this length should indeed involve some planning and editing, and not just be written out in one shot through stream of consciousness.
I know people will probably get on my case for making that claim ("Who are you to say how artists should create their art?") but I don't believe anyone is really genius enough to use such a method to put out a novel that is fit for consumption. If you have something to say, and you want other people to appreciate it, you owe it to them to polish it into the best form you can, and not just vomit words onto a page and say "good enough." Maybe she's just writing for herself, and that's fine, but then, seeing as this is how she's going to do it, I certainly won't be bothering to read any more of her works.
I understood going in that this would not be a traditional novel. It's extremely surreal, and I guess its point is more to convey atmosphere or provoke reflection than to tell a story. But in order to sustain a reader's interest across several hundred pages, I think you need more than just vague, tantalizing weirdness. Can Xue didn't deliver anything more than that.
The characters, for instance, weren't compelling at all. They neither felt real enough to relate to, nor did they exemplify any ideas or archetypes strongly enough to be interesting in that respect. They were just empty shells with some dialog attached. If you were to ask me, for instance, what particular qualities Liujin had (who was, if not the "main character", at least the one who took up the majority of the book) or what distinguished her from any of the others, I would be hard pressed to give you any kind of answer. And the same goes for most of the others. I can tell you some things they did or things that happened to them, but I couldn't tell you what motivated them or what kind of people they were, with a few exceptions. Those exceptions weren't frequent or strong enough to redeem the book.
They all have the same dull conversations with random leaps, that end up going nowhere. They are always exclaiming things without much pretext in the story to explain why they suddenly exclaim those things. And the author constantly asserts that they have emotional reactions, again, without much justification or explanation of why they are having these reactions. Passages that go something like this:
A held B's hand and looked at the sky. There was a bird flying there. She felt joy rise in her heart.
"B, is the bird sending us a message?"
B replied, "Yes. Did you know I like to eat strawberries in the summer?"
A suddenly felt anxious and dropped B's hand. "Hey C, are you looking for your lost pen?"
C was stooping under the bridge looking for something. He laughed heartily. "You're such a child of Pebble Town!" he said.
A turned around, but B had disappeared. She couldn't even see any footprints. A looked into the woods. She could hear a baby crying, but she couldn't see a baby anywhere.
"Isn't B so brave!" A sighed.
Seriously, that's what the writing is like in this book. Yes, there are some deeper sounding allusions and mysteries, like the strange garden, the nature of the Design Institute's Director, and such, but in the end none of it goes anywhere, and it's never interesting enough to feel very engaged by it.
It's kind of like reading someone's unedited dream journal. I've been writing down my dreams for 25 years, over hundreds of pages, and though some of them are really interesting, many are not, and even I can get bored re-reading them. Many of them only hold interest for me precisely because they were my dreams. Someone else reading straight through them would likely find an amusing section here or there, but overall be bored by too many details that are mostly mundane and nonsensical.
That captures the atmosphere of Frontier perfectly I think. Mundane and nonsensical, with a few alluring images that crop up here and there, but never connect into anything satisfying, so that towards the end, I was more annoyed by the book than anything else, and just wanted to finish it so I could move on to something else.
I heard it said that Can Xue claims she writes in a continuous stream without any editing. My impression from this book is that she doesn't do much planning, either. To me, this is a grave insult to the reader. This is a novel, not a poem. A work of this length should indeed involve some planning and editing, and not just be written out in one shot through stream of consciousness.
I know people will probably get on my case for making that claim ("Who are you to say how artists should create their art?") but I don't believe anyone is really genius enough to use such a method to put out a novel that is fit for consumption. If you have something to say, and you want other people to appreciate it, you owe it to them to polish it into the best form you can, and not just vomit words onto a page and say "good enough." Maybe she's just writing for herself, and that's fine, but then, seeing as this is how she's going to do it, I certainly won't be bothering to read any more of her works.
May 17, 2024
Can Xue is excellent at writing displacement fiction - there is no time, no place, only this strange town that exists, and when you exist in the town the rest of the world ceases to.
I absolutely love it, and also see it as a pretty remarkable accomplishment - in my own writing, I tried to write with time confusion, for lack of a better word, and it is incredibly difficult to pull off, and Xue seems to have done it effortlessly. I am in full bloom of infatuation with her writing style.
I really enjoyed this read. The mythic quality is incredibly cool, and the haze that surrounds the prose is pretty unique from my reading experience. I felt like there is so much depth and meaning to the text.
There is an airiness to the prose that is especially striking. Difficult to isolate or describe but nonetheless provocative.
A unique and singular book.
I absolutely love it, and also see it as a pretty remarkable accomplishment - in my own writing, I tried to write with time confusion, for lack of a better word, and it is incredibly difficult to pull off, and Xue seems to have done it effortlessly. I am in full bloom of infatuation with her writing style.
I really enjoyed this read. The mythic quality is incredibly cool, and the haze that surrounds the prose is pretty unique from my reading experience. I felt like there is so much depth and meaning to the text.
There is an airiness to the prose that is especially striking. Difficult to isolate or describe but nonetheless provocative.
A unique and singular book.
Read
January 18, 2021you never quite know what’s going on but at some point it stops mattering so much. I found it sometimes unsettling and sometimes strangely comforting. in any case just really strong and different from anything else I’ve read
January 10, 2021
I'm not going to pretend that I understood this book.
March 10, 2022
¡Fantástica!
Estilisticamente oriental al cien por ciento.
Mezcla visiones surrealistas y oníricas en el desarrollo intimista de los personajes, haciendo una fina crítica al régimen chino.
Una pluma magistral, delicada y muy aguda.
Estilisticamente oriental al cien por ciento.
Mezcla visiones surrealistas y oníricas en el desarrollo intimista de los personajes, haciendo una fina crítica al régimen chino.
Una pluma magistral, delicada y muy aguda.
September 7, 2017
Pseudonymously-named Can Xue (the name means "dirty snow" or "leftover snow" and apparently invokes pejorative language used in China to denigrate the kind of experimental fiction she writes) writes the mystical. That is to say that the mystical is her subject, and that she seems so enmeshed in the mystical that she herself becomes expressed in it (as an a posteriori expression of it). Never has a pseudonym (it could have been any pseudonym) been more appropriate. This is the first book of hers I have gotten ahold of, having for some time been intrigued by evidence encountered here and there of her considerable reputation. I have never read anything quite like it. One might be tempted to call FRONTIER magical realism, but I feel like this would suggest the book in some way fits w/ an established template which it determinedly does not. It seems to me extremely timely that I would read this book as TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN (which I have been watching religiously week to week) was rolling to its finish. Not only does Pebble Town, the locality on the titular frontier where everything more or less takes place, bear some parallel with television's most famous oddball Pacific Northwest town, but I see Can Xue doing something similar to what David Lynch does. Lynch has spoken of using transcendental meditation to take his creativity into the deepest waters possible, where strange and beautiful fish (totally alien to less devoted divers) thrive. Can Xue likewise seems to want to create from the depths. I suspect she, like Lynch, is not the least bit interested in parsing what her work means or signifies. She simply wants to let creation vibrate in an unobstructed fashion. One senses that something close to automatic writing is happening here, self-censorship being deployed minimally. One may wish to compare the book to dream (some have), but to me FRONTIER speaks above all else to the creative act. The style is simple and fascinating. For nominally experimental fiction the book is unique in proceeding in a nakedly sequential fashion, not entirely unlike a children's story. This happens, then this happens, then this happens, then this happens. It is calm and leisurely writing but in constant engagement with the fantastical. There is a mystical quality to causality here, a sense of the re-scaling of reality inherent to experiences w/ psychedelic drugs, and characters who are very often mysteriously moved or wholly awed. This is a demonstratively strange world, and there is no reason to expose it to much scrutiny. I felt like the characters feel. This is an epic achievement, immersing the reader in a near-haptic conjuring. I was so zoned-in that I felt as though the weather in the book were my weather. I feel like I have been to Pebble Town. I could not draw you a map. Maps? What a boundless absurdity!
Shelved as 'couldn-t-get-through-it'
September 5, 2017I think I just wasn't in the right mood for this book. As far as I could tell after reading the first 50 pages or so, it's got a kind of serious whimsy (an oxymoron that means something to me, at least!) that I could have liked. For example, character names. Why are two Chinese characters named Nancy and Juan, but the others have Chinese-language names? This strikes me as the kind of book that wouldn't explain that - it just is what it is. You don't read this book for a plot - you just let the characters and situations flow over you and surf it like a wave. The writing is clean and clear, so it will be an easy ride. I hope I get the chance to try it again.
July 27, 2022
Una novela maravillosa a pesar de la traducción, que para mí es lo que más le ha restado, no sé si por el traductor en sí o quizá por la falta de una corrección posterior.
Aun así, se aprecia el increíble estilo de Can Xue, las imágenes son preciosas y el mundo y cultura chinos están más que presentes.
Aun así, se aprecia el increíble estilo de Can Xue, las imágenes son preciosas y el mundo y cultura chinos están más que presentes.
August 10, 2022
Parts of this are intriguing and atmospheric. For the most part it's just confusing and frustrating. I took fairly decent notes for every chapter hoping we would arrive at some kind of point, or ending. The notes were useless as the book never attempts to explain anything.
Here is the link to the buddy reads thread where myself and others discussed it while reading: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
I saw this quote while reading articles about this book. Apologies I can't remember where it was now.
"Reading this book is like trying to solve a mystery in a dream. Like the Pleiades, it's best glimpsed without looking at it directly."
I tried to read it this way, without trying to understand and just sort of "experience" but it didn't make the book any more enjoyable.
Here is the link to the buddy reads thread where myself and others discussed it while reading: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
I saw this quote while reading articles about this book. Apologies I can't remember where it was now.
"Reading this book is like trying to solve a mystery in a dream. Like the Pleiades, it's best glimpsed without looking at it directly."
I tried to read it this way, without trying to understand and just sort of "experience" but it didn't make the book any more enjoyable.
November 6, 2023
Can Xue: 5 stars
Translators: 1 star
I couldn’t finish the book because of the translators decision to replace the original Chinese names with Western names. Mr. Sherman. José. Nancy. Why are those names in a book that takes place in a frontier town near the Gobi Desert? Inexcusable. The book had the makings of being an all time favorite for me, but I just couldn’t get past it. Shameful decision by the translators and the publisher. If it ever gets re-released with the names fixed, I’ll definitely read it from cover to cover.
Translators: 1 star
I couldn’t finish the book because of the translators decision to replace the original Chinese names with Western names. Mr. Sherman. José. Nancy. Why are those names in a book that takes place in a frontier town near the Gobi Desert? Inexcusable. The book had the makings of being an all time favorite for me, but I just couldn’t get past it. Shameful decision by the translators and the publisher. If it ever gets re-released with the names fixed, I’ll definitely read it from cover to cover.
June 15, 2024
the intro says ‘this book is lengthening as I read it, not shortening’ and I have never read a more honest summary. I understand less than when I started.
December 30, 2023
El pangolín que vivía en un coño
December 26, 2023
What exactly happened there ? When we read a book there's often an unstated contract between writer and reader . Something will unfold on the page , something in the way of a story , characters , a beginning and an end . Writers are taught how to produce work that engages the reader , creates a sense of somewhere or someone , of something however minor happening .
Not so Can Xue . This novel is part of an extensive project to deconstruct the novel , to take it to the Frontier of our understanding of what a novel is for. We are in Pebbletown a liminal.place full of people who work at a mysterious Design Institute . These people live unsettled lives , events are unpredictable and incomprehensible and episodes occur without consequence or connection . Animals , particularly birds , appear and disappear and an Edenic garden is glimpsed by some . Time and substance are distorted , buildings expand and contract , vagrants move in and out of the city . Nothing makes any sense .
It's a hard read . I'm experiencing the same disorientation , alienation and confusion as the people living in PebbleTown. That's the point . Nothing makes sense . Nothing is what it seems .
I was keen to hang my coat on a hook but it kept falling on the floor and turning into a dozen frogs who then sunk onto the ground . I lay in the ground for an hour and a man stepped over me on his way to the kebab shop . The poplar trees moved closer to him and wrapped us both in a cage . Some fish jumped out of the river . Something like that for 347 pages .
Not so Can Xue . This novel is part of an extensive project to deconstruct the novel , to take it to the Frontier of our understanding of what a novel is for. We are in Pebbletown a liminal.place full of people who work at a mysterious Design Institute . These people live unsettled lives , events are unpredictable and incomprehensible and episodes occur without consequence or connection . Animals , particularly birds , appear and disappear and an Edenic garden is glimpsed by some . Time and substance are distorted , buildings expand and contract , vagrants move in and out of the city . Nothing makes any sense .
It's a hard read . I'm experiencing the same disorientation , alienation and confusion as the people living in PebbleTown. That's the point . Nothing makes sense . Nothing is what it seems .
I was keen to hang my coat on a hook but it kept falling on the floor and turning into a dozen frogs who then sunk onto the ground . I lay in the ground for an hour and a man stepped over me on his way to the kebab shop . The poplar trees moved closer to him and wrapped us both in a cage . Some fish jumped out of the river . Something like that for 347 pages .
August 9, 2023
I very much struggled with this. Especially on some pages, I would read a sentence or paragraph, move on, realize it had totally fallen out of my head, go back and reread, move on, realize it still wasn't in my head, and rinse and repeat over and over again. I think that's because often the sentences themselves have no logical link to each other; one thing happens, then another, then another, and they're all various degrees of surreal, and no one of them leads to the next: they stand as isolated moments, accruing no consistency, disconnected from continuity. Does anything in this book matter in the traditional sense? Is there a plot? (I should also confess it took me until probably halfway to realize that baby Liujin is also adult Liujing--I genuinely thought there just happened to be a baby with the same name.)
For some readers, I believe this is indeed mezmerizing--for me, it resisted me, and I kept going just because if this is a touchstone of modern avant-garde literature, I want to have some reference point, as I want to have a reference point for contemporary Chinese writers who I've barely read at all (starting here may have been a bad idea). The introduction was worse than useless, explaining that as this novel isn't for me, I'm a normie, without elaborating on what any meanings may be in the book. But towards the end, when a character's having Uighur heritage is mentioned, a ray of light dawned: perhaps what drives the opaque, shifting, frustrating nature of the text is an opaque political world, and the frontier is in some ways the edge of what and who is allowed to be Chinese. As a political allegory or exploration of things that perhaps can't be discussed--Uighur internment in particular, and also the control of people's movements--the empty Design Institute, the digging of ditches in Smoke City, the animals (especially wagtails) as holders of secret knowledge, the clusters of people in kebab shops and on the river all make more sense. The town of Pebble City is not a town in the center of Han culture, obviously; it's at the fringes, held within a larger cultural context but also shadowy, outside. With those few clues--the shish kebabs, the mountains and mountain people (shade of Tibet?)--something that has a deeper meaning starts to come into vision, more than just shifting random sentences and collections of moments as characters shapeshift. Have I invented that meaning? Do I think it's the entirety of the purpose? I'm not sure, and certainly not--it seems any writer couldn't address the internment or control of populations directly, but perhaps creating this amorphous world does capture some of the nebulous spirit of living around these events, of their psychic energy. Certainly the book itself declaims we are outside the center, at the frontiers--and it's at those margins and interfaces where the Chinese identity and government comes into struggle with other cultures and tries to suppress them, rather than allowing them to coexist as Can Xue seems to wish for; even though that coexistence creates murkiness and confusion.
For some readers, I believe this is indeed mezmerizing--for me, it resisted me, and I kept going just because if this is a touchstone of modern avant-garde literature, I want to have some reference point, as I want to have a reference point for contemporary Chinese writers who I've barely read at all (starting here may have been a bad idea). The introduction was worse than useless, explaining that as this novel isn't for me, I'm a normie, without elaborating on what any meanings may be in the book. But towards the end, when a character's having Uighur heritage is mentioned, a ray of light dawned: perhaps what drives the opaque, shifting, frustrating nature of the text is an opaque political world, and the frontier is in some ways the edge of what and who is allowed to be Chinese. As a political allegory or exploration of things that perhaps can't be discussed--Uighur internment in particular, and also the control of people's movements--the empty Design Institute, the digging of ditches in Smoke City, the animals (especially wagtails) as holders of secret knowledge, the clusters of people in kebab shops and on the river all make more sense. The town of Pebble City is not a town in the center of Han culture, obviously; it's at the fringes, held within a larger cultural context but also shadowy, outside. With those few clues--the shish kebabs, the mountains and mountain people (shade of Tibet?)--something that has a deeper meaning starts to come into vision, more than just shifting random sentences and collections of moments as characters shapeshift. Have I invented that meaning? Do I think it's the entirety of the purpose? I'm not sure, and certainly not--it seems any writer couldn't address the internment or control of populations directly, but perhaps creating this amorphous world does capture some of the nebulous spirit of living around these events, of their psychic energy. Certainly the book itself declaims we are outside the center, at the frontiers--and it's at those margins and interfaces where the Chinese identity and government comes into struggle with other cultures and tries to suppress them, rather than allowing them to coexist as Can Xue seems to wish for; even though that coexistence creates murkiness and confusion.
June 30, 2017
I want to start with saying that this won't be an extremely long review. This book was of a different reading format and style, and I found it to be quite refreshing. If a person chooses to read Frontier, that person will have to be patient and be able to enjoy constant references to nature. It takes a depth of concentration for this book to make any sense. I allowed myself at least 2 weeks to slowly read through, so I might not miss too many details. There were many ideas and points of view happening, that I sometimes even found myself confused. I would then have to think specifically about what I had earlier read. Before I had reached the halfway mark, I noticed something I had never seen in any book (and I've read a few books before). In the Table of Contents, Chapter 6 is listed as Liujin and Amy. When I turned to page 143, the title was Liujin and Roy. At first I thought it was a mistake. I'd never seen anything like that before. It seemed interesting to me. After reading this book though, I feel it very well could have been intentional! Overall, I'm glad with my decision to read it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 17, 2021
One time, after taking 2 Spanish classes at university, I tried watching Pan's Labyrinth without subtitles. I already loved the movie, so I knew the story, but it was very odd watching it without knowing what people were saying (turns out knowing "la pluma está la mesa" is not enough Spanish knowledge!). This is what reading Frontier is like. Have you ever listened to a really little kid tell a story? Like you understand and recognize the words the kid is using, and the kid is super pumped and animated telling the story, but you're really not sure what's happening at any moment? That's what reading Frontier is like. Or even like, waking up from a really intensely strange dream, and trying to tell your partner or friend about it, but the second you start explaining all the magically interesting elements of the dream just fall apart and you can't quite describe why the dream was so good. That's what reading Frontier is like.
September 28, 2017
Possibly the worst feeling you can have as a reader is the sensation that some brilliant work respected by all the people you respect completely fails to connect. All the right people have said all the right things about Frontier and it seems like everything I would like. But I just don't get it and I don't like it. At all. And I hate to think that I'm missing out on the party when so many people have so many interesting things to say about it, but I apart from a few lovely, disconnected images I am getting literally nothing out of this book, and I don't hate myself or attend graduate school, so I'm dropping it halfway through and getting on with my life.
I like unusual fiction, experimental fiction is only "experimental" when it doesn't work, and boy oh boy is this a whopping big "experiment." I still love the idea of Can Xue, though.
I like unusual fiction, experimental fiction is only "experimental" when it doesn't work, and boy oh boy is this a whopping big "experiment." I still love the idea of Can Xue, though.
Read
November 5, 2019Rating: technically reserved / 5
Even if I pay money to own the book, I cannot get through something that bores me to sleep. In the case of Frontier, I couldn't even stick to my minimum 50-page rule and make it even that far. There was nothing happening insofar as I could tell, the writing was a tad tiresome, with paragraphs of description and abrupt changes in topic with no precursor, and overall, I just couldn't seem to care about what was happening, no matter how bizarre the author tried to make it sound.
As such, I reserve judgement for this novel and will wait until I feel like picking it up again and getting through it. With a lifetime ahead of me, maybe at some point I will care enough to try again.
Even if I pay money to own the book, I cannot get through something that bores me to sleep. In the case of Frontier, I couldn't even stick to my minimum 50-page rule and make it even that far. There was nothing happening insofar as I could tell, the writing was a tad tiresome, with paragraphs of description and abrupt changes in topic with no precursor, and overall, I just couldn't seem to care about what was happening, no matter how bizarre the author tried to make it sound.
As such, I reserve judgement for this novel and will wait until I feel like picking it up again and getting through it. With a lifetime ahead of me, maybe at some point I will care enough to try again.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 95 reviews