2015 read #60: China Dolls by Lisa See.

China Dolls by Lisa See
384 pages
Published 2014
Read from October 7 to October 11
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5

I think I'll always need genre training wheels on my literature. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but at times I see it as a personal failing as a reader that I so rarely seek out, much less enjoy, what might be styled "conventional" literary fiction. I've talked before about my disdain for the "Napa Valley wedding" novel, the sort of dreadfully boring yet eternally popular upper-middle class verisimilitude in which rich people bruise each other's feelings and, like, ride horses or something. If a book is mired in dull realism, is set in the present day, and deals nigh-exclusively with class-privileged folks, I just can't bring myself to carry it so much as an inch closer to the library checkout counter. The only thing more boring to me would be some inane murder mystery for the protagonist to unravel -- and the two overlap far more often than I would have credited before I began combing my library's stacks for new things to read.

Almost every entry on my literary fiction tag falls into some additional category that spiced it up for my palate: YA, much of which features protagonists specially crafted to appeal to bookish, socially awkward types of any age; historical fiction, which, with its exotic and often educational settings, is essentially genre fiction in its own right; vague, softball psychological horror, which tends to be much less interesting than the publisher's plot description or the cover art; some surreal or fantastical element, as with the works of Murakami or Oyeyemi, which I won't hesitate to label fantasy (as an inverse of those "fantasy" novels of the mid-'80s and early '90s, such as The Doubleman and Briar Rose, which have nothing whatsoever fantastical about them). Far too infrequently, there is another category I've been known to enjoy: literary fiction set more or less in the present that deals with places or peoples I know nothing about, or lifestyles and situations I have no experience of. One of the few books I read in 2012, before beginning this blog, was The Geometry of God by Uzma Aslam Khan, which impressed me very much at the time; I'd love to read more works like that, excellent fiction that, however minutely, expands my cultural and social horizons.

China Dolls (recommended to me by my friend Francesca) is set primarily within the (so-called) "Oriental" nightclub scene in the years before and during World War II. It's a time and a social environment I know little about, so it appeals to me not only as a historical novel but also as a horizon-expanding exposure to a social context seldom discussed in our current mainstream (white, affluent) culture. Yet much of the actual plot follows the fortunes, friendships, secrets, and ongoing betrayals of its three central characters -- the sort of thing that would feel so dreadfully dull had it been set amongst the vineyards and inheritance lawyers of Napa Valley. The whole literary schtick about "secret traumas lead to horrible betrayals among friends or family members" can feel artificial, a fill-in-the-blank plot starter kit -- nowhere near as egregious as "parent/old friend/estranged sibling dies in mysterious circumstances, and architect/lawyer/novelist protagonist must open old wounds and confront family/town secrets to uncover the truth," but off-putting nonetheless. In China Dolls, those at-long-last-revealed secrets are devastating and pack an emotional heft, which renders the betrayals and melodrama of earlier chapters far more affecting in retrospect, but before that point, which came (of course) at the climax of the book, I found my attention wandering, despite the fascinating historical milieu. Hence me musing about my need for genre training wheels to get me through just about every book, no matter how good the book itself might be.

To be fair, my attention would have been wandering anyway, divided between YouTube videos of thru-hikes and a payday impulse-purchase of Minecraft. For two or three nights now I've been dreaming in cubes.