A review by obscuredbyclouds
Lust, Caution and Other Stories by Eileen Chang

3.0

I expected something completely different from this book. It's neither gripping nor filled with "lust": these are slice of slife short stories without much of a narrative with an unusual setting for a Western reader. I felt a got a sense of ww2 Shanghai, and the writing was elegant (if a little bit too adjective-filled) but I found the stories quite confusing; after a few pages my mind would always start to wander and I had to force myself to pay attention. It's really interesting to me that this kind of writing was really selling well, because it seems like the antithesis of what "should" be commercially successful. I'm not racing to read more of Eileen Chang, but it was a nice reminder to read more authors from countries I usually neglect reading from.