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springernichole3's review
It is a really cool story of both a woman in Shanghai during different periods of Chinese history and the history of the city itself. A little long and detailed, but an important read.
mweisenfeld's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
intellectual_tortellino's review
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
3.0
Il y a trois titres du roman qui ont été traduits en français :
[b:Le Chant des regrets éternels|10673548|Le chant des regrets éternels|Wang Anyi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1430893480l/10673548._SY75_.jpg|3145343], Yvonne André et Stéphane Lévêque, 2008
[b:À la recherche de Shanghai|15864966|À la recherche de Shanghai|Wang Anyi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1346244336l/15864966._SY75_.jpg|3145343], Yvonne André, 2011
[b:La Coquette de Shanghai|44790384|La Coquette de Shanghai|Wang Anyi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1554465653l/44790384._SY75_.jpg|3145343], Brigitte Guilbaud, 2017
[b:Le Chant des regrets éternels|10673548|Le chant des regrets éternels|Wang Anyi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1430893480l/10673548._SY75_.jpg|3145343], Yvonne André et Stéphane Lévêque, 2008
[b:À la recherche de Shanghai|15864966|À la recherche de Shanghai|Wang Anyi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1346244336l/15864966._SY75_.jpg|3145343], Yvonne André, 2011
[b:La Coquette de Shanghai|44790384|La Coquette de Shanghai|Wang Anyi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1554465653l/44790384._SY75_.jpg|3145343], Brigitte Guilbaud, 2017
pilesandpiles's review against another edition
4.0
This is an incredible novel, impressionistic and episodic. I read it because I had watched Stanley Kwan's film adaptation, Everlasting Regret, some years before, but the book is so much about the character's internal life that it is completely different from the movie.
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow follows Wang Qiyao's life in Shanghai from her days as a young girl during World War II through the 1980s. Reading it is like sitting at the shore and watching waves refract. Wang Qiyao's life is divided into three periods, each of which feels like a variation on the others. Each period, although told through a continuous plot, is broken down into vignette-like chapters that feel weighted with both the presence of what is said and the absence of what is not. Desire and melancholy run through the story, finding concrete form here and there in material objects or as the shape of a physical space. Wang Anyi returns again and again to the dynamic of interior and exterior urban experience, rendering the street as a realm of anonymity and privacy and the home as a realm of visibility. It's history as the accretion of sense and mood.
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow follows Wang Qiyao's life in Shanghai from her days as a young girl during World War II through the 1980s. Reading it is like sitting at the shore and watching waves refract. Wang Qiyao's life is divided into three periods, each of which feels like a variation on the others. Each period, although told through a continuous plot, is broken down into vignette-like chapters that feel weighted with both the presence of what is said and the absence of what is not. Desire and melancholy run through the story, finding concrete form here and there in material objects or as the shape of a physical space. Wang Anyi returns again and again to the dynamic of interior and exterior urban experience, rendering the street as a realm of anonymity and privacy and the home as a realm of visibility. It's history as the accretion of sense and mood.
kbbooks's review
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai is exactly as the title indicates; it truly is a novel of Shanghai. While the story appears to follow the life of Wang Qiyao, it's really following the transformation of Shanghai from 1946 until 1986. Wang Anyi's prose is beautiful (and incredible respect and admiration for the translators, which my copy lists as Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan). I was very excited to read this book because I have heard such wonderful reviews. However, it simply fell flat, and I felt it was just *fine*.
It is not a plot-driven book by any means, but that's because it's less about what is happening to the characters and more about examining the cyclical patterns of life through an aging city through the use of characters. I really enjoyed the examination of the city as a somewhat historical study and social commentary, despite the lengthiness of the book. I find the long descriptions of settings fascinating, personally, and if the book had simply been descriptions of settings written in Wang Anyi's lyrical prose, I would have been absolutely thrilled.
Unfortunately, the characters, and the treatment of the characters, completely ruined it for me. At first I was intrigued by Wang Qiyao and I truly felt bad for her in many instances in the beginning. That quickly turned to indifference and eventually to near disgust. I felt like her character changed very little through the entirety of the novel, and what change did occur was negative. I understand that her character was written to be incapable of maintaining relationships with others, which should be a tragic thing, but it just felt like she was a vain, egotistical, manipulative person with very little else to offer anyone besides nostalgia. And no amount of personal tragedy on her part can make me overlook her bitterness and selfishness. I feel like I should have been moved when Long Legs murdered her, but I wasn't. At all. I literally did not care.
Now moving on to the side characters. Some of them were nice. Wu Peizhen seemed like a decent, potentially multifaceted character, although we are hardly given any time to get to know her. And Mr. Cheng seemed was a nice, steady character, and I truly did feel for him. We at least got some time with him, although he was never mentioned or thought of by Wang Qiyao after his suicide! Mr. Cheng deserved so much better than that.
But then every other secondary character was so flat and one dimensional that I cared very little about what happened to any of them. The only other character I had any actual emotional response to was WeiWei, who annoyed me to no end. The relationship between Wang Qiyao and WeiWei was so infuriating. I just wanted to yell at them to both get over themselves, and I was not upset when WeiWei exited the narrative, which probably should have elicited some sort of sadness from me since she was Wang Qiyao's daughter.
Overall, I was just not impressed with the actual narrative of the story. I understand what it was intended to do, but it just didn't do it for me. The more I read the more I just didn't care, and the main reason I finished it is because I don't like to DNF books. I did still really enjoy the prose at the beginnings of the chapters because they felt like love poems to the city of Shanghai, which I thought was quite nice. But this is not a book that I would recommend.
It is not a plot-driven book by any means, but that's because it's less about what is happening to the characters and more about examining the cyclical patterns of life through an aging city through the use of characters. I really enjoyed the examination of the city as a somewhat historical study and social commentary, despite the lengthiness of the book. I find the long descriptions of settings fascinating, personally, and if the book had simply been descriptions of settings written in Wang Anyi's lyrical prose, I would have been absolutely thrilled.
Now moving on to the side characters. Some of them were nice. Wu Peizhen seemed like a decent, potentially multifaceted character, although we are hardly given any time to get to know her. And Mr. Cheng seemed was a nice, steady character, and I truly did feel for him. We at least got some time with him, although he was never mentioned or thought of by Wang Qiyao after his suicide! Mr. Cheng deserved so much better than that.
But then every other secondary character was so flat and one dimensional that I cared very little about what happened to any of them. The only other character I had any actual emotional response to was WeiWei, who annoyed me to no end. The relationship between Wang Qiyao and WeiWei was so infuriating. I just wanted to yell at them to both get over themselves, and I was not upset when WeiWei exited the narrative, which probably should have elicited some sort of sadness from me since she was Wang Qiyao's daughter.
Overall, I was just not impressed with the actual narrative of the story. I understand what it was intended to do, but it just didn't do it for me. The more I read the more I just didn't care, and the main reason I finished it is because I don't like to DNF books. I did still really enjoy the prose at the beginnings of the chapters because they felt like love poems to the city of Shanghai, which I thought was quite nice. But this is not a book that I would recommend.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide
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