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HomeShop at BookSurgeJuvenile Non-FictionBiography & AutobiographyHow Mao Died: A Chinese Love-story |
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4 of 5 found the following review helpful:
How Mao Died : love, loss and betrayal Jul 13, 2006
By Helen Trenos
David George calls his novel How Mao Died "reality fiction". Why not? We have reality TV. But he means more by calling his blend of biography, autobiography, history and fiction by this term. This book is a breath of fresh air in a recent spate of books on Mao which would have us believe he was simply a tyrant and murderer: they have been written by people who suffered during the Cultural Revolution and now want to get their own back. But as George reminds us, they are no more true - or false - than the old accounts of Mao the poet-priest. Besides, if Mao was just a tyrant, why did millions of people willingly choose to take up his cause and follow him?
George speaks from the vantage point of somebody who lived and worked in China during the 1970s, was a believer who became disillusioned, and is neither pro nor anti Mao. He avoids the pettiness of "taking sides" in order to pose the crucial questions: "Why did so many believe?" "What happens when we are left disillusioned--is it better to have believed and lost than never to have believed at all?" In the contemporary world where cynicism seems to prevail and to believe is naïve, these questions are more than historical.
All of the main characters in How Mao Died: Edgar Snow (the American journalist who made Mao famous), Yin-Wei (the "Girl with the swallow-tail plaits"), and David George himself had to learn how to live after the dream has faded and it is this which is the great strength of this novel: it faces reality in all its brutality but does not let reality dictate its sad message: How did the swallow lose its tail? Let Yin Wei tell us: "Once they had a single tail like all other birds, but when the winter came and the cold, they huddled in their caves until their tails froze to the walls of their nests. They could not move; they could only sing and they did, very beautifully. People heard them, came to catch them. To get away, they had to flap their wings very hard until they tore their body away from their frozen tail. Now they have two tails - one left, one right, so that whichever way the wind blows, they can find their way home.
When the spring comes and then fades too soon, they remember the winter they lost their tails and the songs they sang..."
How Mao Died is beautifully written, rich and complex: it is a tale of how history is made, how people are mislead but, in the end, a tale of hope; in the end a love story.
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