Reviews

So there is a young man (presumably 20s? I'm just guessing here.) called Luo Xiaotong who is retelling the story of his childhood to a Wise Monk. The things that occur while he is telling the story is totally bizarre from storms raging outside and people chopping off the heads of ostriches to naked women doing odd things. Very bizarre. The story about his childhood itself is based the meat adventures of his village. He talks about his poor childhood and how much he'd yearn for a morsel of meat but his mother was too stubborn and was more focused on saving money and building their house to show his dad what he was missing out on since he ran away with another woman. Xiaotong's dad eventually returned and life got better. His dad had a special gift in weighing animals by eye and after patching up the relationship with his mortal enemy, the whole family went to work at the meat packing factory. Here, Xiaotong exercises his creativity and comes up with a way of injecting water into the meat without actually injecting water.

There is literally nothing else that happens and I just kept waiting for it to get better. It felt more like a book explaining the process of preserving meat more than anything else.

I loved the descriptions; I thought that they were incredibly beautiful probably because they were translated from Chinese so the descriptions were very exotic. There were quite a few funny parts and sad moments as well. But the good things end about there. I could not follow on at all. The tale just jumps back and forth and back and forth much too quickly for my liking.

There was only one good jump, however, when Xiaotong was describing the funeral of his aunty.

Father raised the hatchet over his head.

'Father!' I shrieked as I ran to him.

'Father!' Jiaojiao shrieked as she ran to him.

The local reporter raised his camera.

The cameraman turned his lens to Father and Lao Lan.

The hatchet circled the air above Father then swung down and split open Mother's head.

She stood as still as a post for a few seconds and then slumped into Father's arms.

And THEN the chapter ended, and it went back to present day. Pow. That was good. But the other parts? Not so much.

Also, I disliked how so many Chinese words were used but were not explained. I could understand what they were saying but I'm sure other people cannot if they did not know the language.

There was practically no story line except the retelling of Xiaotong's life, which believe me, was not much of a story line even though many things did happen. The author even had an afterword where he said: "Throughout the novel, narration is the goal, narration is the theme and narration is its constrict of ideas. The goal of narration is narration. But if I were forced to make a story out of this novel, I'd settle for the story of a boy prattling on and on about a story."

It sounds beautiful in theory, but in practice, it simply means there isn't a story but and an endless stream of words.

Considering all this, I decided on a 1.5/5 but I'm tempted to bring it down to a 1. Plot is very important to me and if you don't have plot, you don't have my attention. But then again it's quite a thick book and I stayed till the end so... I don't know. I did not like it though.

daneekasghost's review

Go to review page

3.0

There's a lot going on in this book, I could imagine this being a great choice for a literature study - to put all of this together, the unreliable narrator, the clearly symbolic passages (even though I'm sure I didn't catch most of them), it takes quite a bit of ability. I wasn't ever blown away by the writing itself, but the structure of the book was impressive.

Consumption seemed to be the main theme, particularly as it relates to modern China's society. At one point, the narrator debates whether to become a deity or a demon, and I think that would be an interesting discussion to have.

It wasn't really a fun book to read, I don't think that was the goal of the author, but while it was impressive, I'm not sure I got enough out of it to make this a rave review. Glad I read it, but I'm not sure if I'll seek out more of Yan's work.

paintedverse's review

Go to review page

4.0

Set in Slaughterhouse Village, Pow! is a story of Luo Xiaotong and "[t]he world's most gluttonous boy"'s obsession with meat. Such is his liking for meat that their voices reach him. The villagers had left their farming business and are devoting their time to the slaughter business. Their lives revolve around the consumption and production of meat. Estranged by his father who ran away with Aunty Wild Mule, the boy is deprived of meat consumption for years. The plot glides, just like the crumbs of meat gliding down his throat.

Luo Xiaotong chronicles the story of his life to Wise Monk. He vows never to eat meat for the rest of his life. This book affected me viscerally. Humorous and gut-wrenching, vibrant and smooth, cascading and throbbing, realistic and surreal, this is the kind of story that made me look for its knotted twins underneath the surface of pages. It is a saga of lusty and beast-like men and women. It is a story that was going fine, but alas, the downfall was inevitable. Even though I loved reading it, I fear I wouldn't recommend this. My rationality has escaped. Delusion seems real.

More...