I have mixed feelings about this. I think the story has good bones — a privileged Australian teenager spends some time in Shanghai to study art during the lead up to the Tiananmen Square protests — but ultimately fell flat. It was hard for me to connect with Anna, who is self-absorbed and rather blind to the plight of others. She also lacks any sort of respect for her father, who just flits in and out of the story tossing money at her at every opportunity. You get some sense of the political climate in Shanghai during this time, but I think that could have been taken further. I wanted to know more about how the city looked, smelled, tasted. I’m not sure the twist in Anna’s story, the repercussions of her brief affair with Chenxi, were really needed. It showed some interesting thing about healthcare in China at that time, but ultimately made little difference in Chenxi’s story. Maybe I expected too much.
