Book club

One of my earlier blogs was about a book that I had started to read, Jian Ma's The Noodle Maker. I finally finished it on the flights back from Boston. (There was a stopover in Denver...) The framing story is about a blood donor and his broke professional writer friend whose subject matter comes from town locals, ranging from a father who tries in vain to ditch his retarded daughter to a philandering poetry editor and his more talented novelist wife to a performance artist who kills herself onstage to attract attention from her lover. The lover is the writer himself? Or is it the blood donor?

The facts and fiction get mixed up, kind of like a Chinese version of The Canterbury Tales, and the friends' commentary during the storytelling isn't far removed from the shit-talkers in the balcony in The Muppet Show. Yes, they are harsh and sarcastic, but you know they party together, too.

Lots of dark humor and criticism--not only about the moral state of China but the human condition in general. My type of book. Ma wrote another novel that has also been translated into English. Guess what my next book review will be?