FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE

This book is not at all what I expected. I thought I would learn a little about Chinese drama and music and instead I was able to experience it for myself. I became Dieyi after the first chapter and felt all the pain that he endured. I was able to understand and connect to why he had never learned to tell the difference from fiction and reality. It is worth reading and now I am looking foward to seeing the movie.

It was a really sad story. I feel even more sad after the actor Leslie Cheung(the one who starred Deiyi) commited suicide a couple of days ago. I cried every time I watched the movie. What is really sad about Deiyi is that he could never tell the difference between real life and the life on the stage. So did Leslie Cheung.

This was beautifully written, and well-worth reading. The way Dieyi almost fuses with his opera role is unsettling and elegant, albeit melodramatic, and it is written in a way that really evokes a sympathy and affection for the characters' position. Drawn in a very rounded way, their vividity is what really jumped out from the page at me. When you read it, you are almost drawn into the play itself because of the parallels it has to the real life of the characters. It's a comparatively short book, but packs a lot of experience into its' pages. A small but densely packed fireball! Many ends are left unfinished or unresolved, but I think this was intentional...not every story has a happy ending, particularly for people involved in political oppression..... A story of contradictions.

It was the first Chinese book for me to read. And I loved it. The whole story keeps searching for escape from the reality, but... There is nowhere to hide. Sometimes it was really hard to read it without crying tears, because Lee really tells the WHOLE story. At the end, no hope is left. No hope. This makes the novel so special.

Well. There is no way to begin to describe this book. Well, actually there is, so... 'Farewell to my Concubine' has an intruiging plot, capturing the hopelessness and desperation of a love that can never be. The plot is conveyd beautifully in the intense complexity of words. The characters are well written and well expressed. The conflict is subtle; there is no clear 'right' and 'wrong' in this book. All in all, it is one of the best books ever written. At least, I think so.