A Thought of One's Own

I know I already mentioned this book but I wanted to do it full justice. It was recommended to me by a tutor, and since I wasn't reading anything I thought I'd give it a go. I think it's rather strangely written. 


The author is very good at setting up the characters, through glimpses of their everyday lives we get to know various people from various walks of life in varying degrees. Some people get only one paragraph in the whole book, others get whole chapters, but it's clear throughout that they are all interconnected. 


The book's official description says it's about the time just before Tienanmen Square and the democratic wall, and that's true, that's when it's set, but I think if you want to know more about this time in China from a historical viewpoint it's the wrong book to read. It's very much grassroots, and you see the effects of the revolution and change without seeing any of the change itself. 


I struggled a bit with the end, because having set up all these characters and this tense position of plot, the story ends very suddenly, and not very satisfyingly. She does bring it all together very well,  but you feel that it was all a bit of a waste of time instead of feeling the turmoil and perhaps hope that I would have expected from that era. But then I suppose that's how the normal everyday people would have felt. 


I also found it hard in places to really connect with the characters and their motives. Sometimes you could completely understand their fears and passions, but at other points what a character is doing and why just doesn't seem to make much sense and it's not really resolved by the end of the book. 


But all in all it was a reasonably thought provoking and well written story, although I would have liked the character development to be a bit more sturdy and perhaps a bit more story past the point where the novel ends.