RaveThe White ReviewThrough the stereoscopic tales of a group of women searching for enlightenment in an uncanny world of espionage and secrets, Can Xue stretches the dimensions of the novel, conjuring an irresistible fiction that is — like the reality in which one character finds himself — \'an enormous enigma within an enigma\' ... Nothing is as it first appears: in Can Xue’s non-conformist characters, and her disregard for traditional narrative conventions, the reader is thrown into a surreal, transitional realm ... The novel is imbued with a certain kind of exhaustive dream logic ... The clamour of voices — manifold whispers, contradictions, gossip, interruptions, conversations, riddles and conspiracies — makes it easy to miss the novel’s quieter moments of satire and poetry. But Can Xue’s dreamscapes are rich and compelling: it would be easy to compare her to Schulz, Calvino or Borges, except that her mythical worlds occupy a space that reads like it is being discovered for the first time ... Can Xue’s prose — in Annelise Finegan Wasmoen’s vivid translation — eschews the stylised clichés of Postmodern experimental fiction, creating a terse and lucid aesthetic that is both symbolic and incisive, oblique and witty.
