Hualing Nieh

When I wrote this=--my only review submitted to Amazon 7(!) years ago, mine was the only one. How happy I was to just find that there are now four others. Reading autumnesf's comment resonates with me as a hs literature teacher who makes the choices my students read! One of my insights over the years is that different students respond to different works, so a broad selection is a really important determinant in making the choices I make in my classroom. I really appreciate her response in the sense that I love books where I don't understand everything--and that certainly applies to M&P. In any case, here is the comments still found online at Amazon:

Mulberry and Peach qualifies as one of the most remarkable novels I have ever read. The title character Peach, in declaring her freedom, careens on as wild and uninhibited a course as any character in literature much in contrast to her meek and terrified now subaltern Mulberry. Try to buy the version which has an afterword by the translator: read this as you're reading the novel as the comments are interesting, informative, and enlightening. The novel's form, its literary roots, its themes all evade any fixed classification--no one can lay claim to any advocacy unless it is on its plea for the individual's integrity in the face of the attempts by societies, historical forces, and governments to quantify and stratify our lives. But even that claim cannot come close to revealing the complexity and exquisite craft of the work itself. Only on a second reading do I start to discover how much a treasure of telling detail "Mulberry and Peach" is. For you analytical types, there are multiple levels of allegory threading through the work. The caveat to "not overinterpret" seems not to apply. Such compelling writing deserves to become better known, more widely read and reread, and extensively broadcast to college literature classes around the world. Let's get it back in print, and then keep it in print. Although I am given to enthusiasms, I'm not given to hyperbole--I say, this is the work of a most masterful author. Please, someone, translate more of her work!… (més)