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Time to make this blog into something more than a whine fest, so I figured I would share my thoughts on some of the books I am reading, and I read a lot during those two-three hours I waste on a bus getting to work. This entry is partly inspired by my discovery of Shelfari website, which is a fabulous and real fun tool to keep track of your books, to read and leave reviews and to find interesting people with reading taste similar to yours.

My Shelfari profile: http://www.shelfari.com/o1517915121/shelf

So, here goes my first review: 

"Candy" by Mian Mian
http://www.shelfari.com/books/143797/Candy

When I read the blurb I was amazed and couldn’t wait to get the book home and start reading. The description promised an incredibly angsty story, written in a very artistic, yet brutally honest way. All I could say was "wow".

The story begins in Shanghai, when a classmate’s suicide prompts narrator Hong to drop out of high school. Fearing she’ll never get a job without an education, Hong heads south to the Special Economic Zone, where the government has lifted restrictions so business can flourish. Among the most successful enterprises are nightclubs, gambling, drugs and prostitution. Hong falls in love with a musician and quickly succumbs to an endless nightlife of sex and drugs and all the problems that tend to accompany such fun.

Yes, the story had a potential, but the author, pompously referred to as "the only hope of Chinese literature" wasted it totally. The writing style is chaotic to the point of making reading a strenuous chore. Mian Mian attempts to present the angst in a lofty, poetic way, but all she manages to achieve is a parody of herself in many, many places. I guess I can safely compare her style to an emo kid’s MySpace blogging. Simplistic, repetitive, boring, unable to hold the reader’s interest for longer than 5 minutes. So much for artistic merit and I refuse to believe that this is the effect she wanted to achieve. Even if – as some critics claim – she aimed for pastiche here, she failed shamefully.

Generally speaking, the book is nothing more than 300 pages of constant whining, which is so annoying that at some point I had to put the book away and rest or I would tear it to pieces. The characters are totally unlikable, the author failed to portray their internal struggle, or any kind of emotional development. I kept reading on till the end in hope that something would finally happen there, some climax event that would make it all worth the time, but… nothing happened.

One big disappointment. Crap.