Candy

by Mian Mian

Overview

An international literary phenomenon — now available for the first time in English translation — Candy is a hip, harrowing tale of risk and desire, the story of a young Chinese woman forging a life for herself in a world seemingly devoid of guidelines.

Hong, who narrates the novel, and whose life in many ways parallels the author's own, drops out of high school and runs away at age 17 to the frontier city of Shenzen. As Hong navigates the temptations of the city, she quickly falls in love with a young musician and together they dive into a cruel netherworld of alcohol, drugs, and excess, a life that fails to satisfy Hong's craving for an authentic self, and for a love that will define her. This startling and subversive novel is a blast of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll that opens up to us a modern China we've never seen before.

Banned in China — with Mian Mian labeled the 'poster child for spiritual pollution' — Candy still managed to sell 60,000 copies, as well as countless additional copies in pirated editions. Candy has been published in eight countries to date and has become a bestseller in France.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316563567
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	07/15/2003
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	943,935
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

Editorial Reviews

"...a fascinating mixture of tone, observation and material...particularly well-written, beautifully translated novel..."
—7/11/03

Washington Post

Candy is a fascinating mixture of tone, observation and material. ...a fascinating mixture of tone, observation and material...particularly well-written, beautifully translated novel...— 7/11/03

The Washington Post

Chinese novelist Mian Mian's American debut offers readers a vicarious journey to a place and time shrouded in mystery: gritty, underground China of the late 1980s through mid-1990s. The story begins in Shanghai, when a classmate's suicide prompts narrator Hong to drop out of high school. Fearing she'll never get a job without an education, Hong heads south to the Special Economic Zone, where the government has lifted restrictions so business can flourish. Among the most successful enterprises are nightclubs, gambling, drugs and prostitution. Hong falls in love with a musician and quickly succumbs to an endless nightlife of sex and drugs and all the problems that tend to accompany such fun. Mian doesn't shy away from the ugliness of this world-alcoholism, drug addiction and AIDS cases abound-but her perceptive, compassionate writing turns Hong's raw experiences into something beautiful. Hong's frequent self-analysis feels honest, unpretentious and believably adolescent; Mian never lets us forget that for all her grim, worldly experience, Hong is still touchingly young and exuberant: "My mood was like my lover's hair. Love, for me, was partly a mood, just like that ultradopey bullshit music that I sometimes liked to listen to. That kind of music made me jumpy, but when I felt tense, I felt happy." Though the prose is uneven, sometimes straining awkwardly for lyrical effect, readers will find Hong a compelling personality. (July 15) Forecast: Like Wei Hui (Shanghai Baby, Atria, 2002), Mian is a cult figure in China, her novels banned by the government. The two novelists are embroiled in a feud-Mian has accused Wei of plagiarizing her-which might provide grist for off-the-book-page coverage in the U.S. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

"My readers are in the streets," Mian Mian has said of her controversial first novel, which was banned in her homeland of China and is available in America for the first time with this translation. This semi-autobiographical story nakedly narrates a harrowing ten years in the life of the narrator, a young woman named Hong. The dysfunctional relationship between Hong, an aspiring writer, and Saining, an aspiring musician, frames a novel that ricochets through the stories of sex, drugs, prostitution, AIDS, suicide, and music that dominate the lives of disaffected youths in China's counterculture. Mian Mian gives little descriptive attention to the political and social conditions taking place outside of her characters' self-absorbed heads. Much of the novel's acclaimed rawness and shock seems stilted in translation, and its emotional fervor seems as familiar and fleeting as a piece of candy on the tongue. Not recommended.-Prudence Peiffer, Ctr. for Curatorial Studies, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Comparisons to Bright Lights, Big City and other Brat Pack landmarks surround this infamous autobiographical first novel (already banned in China). It's a morose tale of "Loneliness, apathy, misery, helplessness, depression, and self-loathing": the story of Hong, a 17-year-old girl who runs away from her Shanghai school and family in 1986, ending up in the bustling, effectively lawless southern city of Shenzen in China's "New Economic Zone." Hong drifts about, getting into trouble, working briefly as a nightclub singer, exchanging stab wounds with a particularly creepy boyfriend, then losing her virginity to Saining, a conflicted, weak-willed pop-rock guitarist and composer. The pair can neither live together nor apart, as Saining becomes a heroin addict, passing on both his habit and his self-destructive sensibility to Hong, who experiments with numerous ways to further ravage her frail body (she's asthmatic) until she's injured in a gang war and brought back to a Shanghai hospital by her clueless father. Then guess what? She turns to writing as therapy ("a method of transforming corruption and decay into something wonderful and miraculous"), takes a bisexual lover, offers comfort and sympathy to acquaintances stalked by AIDS, and hesitantly readmits the supposedly reformed Saining back into her life, as both are approaching 30 and ostensibly too mature to keep tearing themselves and each other to pieces. Candy is a mercifully quick read: lots of action, many clichés (which probably aren't the fault of Lingenfelter's brisk translation), an abundance of clipped dialogue festooned with trendy obscenities and explicitly detailed sex. Interpolated anecdotal portrayals of other restlessyouths hell-bent on early death provide some variation, but little relief. We're stuck with Hong's smug, essentially unconvincing declarations of self-reclamation and enlightenment. Mian's grasp of sordid detail is firm and sure, but the nasty high that Candy produces doesn't linger, and probably isn't all that good for you.

Kirkus Reviews