Love in a Fallen City and Other Stories

After the film adaptation of Lust, Caution, interest in Eileen Chang's work has resurfaced, and I think that the half a dozen stories anthology features some of her better stories. Love in a Fallen City contributes to a view of love that might leave the reader a little disillusioned with love, but is certainly worth reading, as her stories make a rich impression. Each features a heroine often burdened by social and familial expectation when she encounters love, as in the titular story. Because of such burdens, love becomes an escape or even an illusion built in her mind and becomes a fascinating study of the female psyche as well as of the female voice during the development of the modern China. Chang's prose is lyrical and the stories will go by quickly if read for pure pleasure, but take a moment to slow down and absorb the characters and settings. The symbolism is sometimes raw and sometimes subtle, but the stories always rich with emotion and sincerity.

Often brandished as a feminist writer for her conscious choice to put female leads in her short stories, to me, Elieen Chang is actually more of a hopeless-romantic. The heroines within the collection of short stories, like Eileen Chang herself are elitists-one of a handful of people having money, leisure, and education. And like Elieen Chang, her heroines are searching for love in a turbulent time of change and chaos in Post-WWII China. Her characters don't care for women equality or political agendas, they have enough on their plates when they are free to pursue their own love lives rather than to be arranged married, which is radically new for that era. Armed with elitist ammos of idealism and wit, these heroines are able to charm their lovers and seducers to be their eventual husbands. And through their quest for romance, the heroines overcome heavy obstacles of archaic traditions, portrayed by old-school fathers or menacing mother-in-laws. Love in a Fallen City can be appreciated more in the backdrop of Chinese history. Shanghai is the frontier of modernizing China, struggling to break free from the feudalistic traditions of the past, particularly confining to women. As an introspective, intelligent, hopeless-romantic woman writer, Elieen Chang has already overcome barriers by creating characters that are just learning how to play the game of love.

There is no room for a fullfilled romance here. Broken dreams, shared pain and loss. Oh could love get worse? Well yes especially when it was the woman you were dating that turned you onto Zhang Aileen and then created her own real life version of these stories. Since the release of Ang Lee's Lust Caution which was based on one of Zhang's short stories, interest in this unusual and reclusive writer has been revived. This collection of short stories is a collection of characters whose fatal flaws and their circumstances conspire against them to shatter any illusion of love. They are so sad and you are thrilled when there is a glimmer of love and softness between them. The stories all have a common theme: that love will never triumph between lonely people - that their loneliness brings them together for the wrong reasons and will also ultimately keep them apart. The translator has done an amazing job of preserving the spartan nature of the prose and maintaining the author's voice - these stories are emotionally draining - but not heavy going. The characters are finely drawn and there is a lightness of language that evokes the fragility of love.