So very sad and beautiful ( )

(6.5)I wanted to really like this small novel but i became very confused by the changing narrative voice and the stories within stories. At times i felt bogged down by the unfamiliar historical accounts. The contemporary story was enjoyable but the structure didn’t work for me. ( )

Very disappointing. Disjointed. I really coudln't get into it. Can't begin to describe it. There are a few poetic phrases worth 1 star. ( )

More like 3 3/4 stars, just shy of 4. The middle part lagged a little hence three stars. This is Dai Sijie third novels, his first since winning the Femina in 2003 with "Le complexe de Di". It's a slow and somewhat nostalgic narrative. We follow the narrator, a young French woman who studied Chinese in Beijing in the late 1970's, fell in love with a young Chinese man with a troubled past. Both their lives are entwined in the most singular yet delightful way. Both become obsessed with a long lost silk scroll inscribed with an obscure language. Both lose themselves in this obsession. It's almost genetic for them. The middle part could have been shorter or edited in a way that it could have been incorporated in the last part making the flow of the narration less chaotic. The ending is very much in keeping with the Chinese, Asian way of seeing and experiencing live.

I'm glad I read it. ( )

Stories within stories, myths within myths ranging from China’s ancient history to communist rule to the modern era in Beijing. I’m not sure if the novel is shy or coy, but it is a quest that is sweeping and forceful and full of the potency of language.

Dai revisits his favorite themes that his readers will recognize: 1) the interaction of Western and Chinese cultures [He also seems to resurrect the violin playing Ma from "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress"]; 2) the impact of forbidden books and texts on the lives of his protagonists; 3) the importance of story as a preservative of culture and the underpinning of civilization and, paradoxically, it’s unreliability. He also introduces a new theme: the abandonment of Chinese language as a result of trauma, injury, or insult by China upon her people, which may reflect Dai’s personal story since he writes exclusively in French.

To the story. Puyi, the last emperor is exiled to Manchuria and takes with him an 800 year-old scroll with an unknown sutra written by the Buddha that is lost to history until it is sold to Paul d’Ampere, a linguist who spends his imprisoned years studying the fragment. The novel is narrated by a female Western student in China who hears the story from Tumchooq (his name is the same name of the language that the scroll is written in) Zhong, her lover. "In Chinese love stories the one who loves always starts by borrowing a book from the beloved," Tumchooq tells her. He is a greengrocer, and the personification of a lost civilization, recently free from a re-education camp, put there for being in possession of a forbidden book, "The Secret Biography of Cixi," given him by his childhood friend, Ma.

Dai slowly reveals that Tumchooq is d’Ampere’s son, and we understand that he is the personification of the blending of two cultures and languages. The book is about language, memory, and identity that derives from story – how it molds and shapes us as individuals, as peoples, and as nations, and how it is itself molded and shaped by re-telling so that the source and original can never be known but only reimagined and reflected.

The novel incorporates several documents beyond the central silk scroll and biography. Textual sources include diaries, research notes, other books, and references mentioned by Professor Tang Li at the beginning of the novel, a history professor who tells the narrator the story of the Emperor Puyi, which involves telling the nested story of an earlier emperor, the eccentric calligrapher and painter, Emperor Huizong, whose story mirrors Puyi’s.

Beautifully written, seductive, and far more complex than his previous two novels, "Once on a Moonless Night" is in a way a modern fairy tale. After all, the title of the book seems equivalent to the western tradition of beginning story or tale. . . “Once upon a time. . .” Dai Sijie, while not as prolific as Umberto Eco, is beginning to write novels that remind me of the works of the Italian semiotician/novelist. ( )