by Kaitlin Barr
Book Review
January 22, 2008
Renowned author Anchee Min will speak at the 13th annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea on Tuesday, Feb. 5. After growing up in Communist China, Anchee Min fled to the United States. She learned English quickly and eventually established herself as a masterful storyteller with her subsequent books, including Becoming Madame Mao.
Simple and powerful, Anchee Min’s biographical novel Becoming Madame Mao delves into the development of dictator Mao Zedong’s most prominent female companion. Though Madame Mao is now widely reviled for her ruthless political manipulation during the mid-20th century Communist regime in China, Min draws out a more nuanced view of her, crafting a portrait of a woman who is neither heroine nor villainess, but instead falls somewhere in between.
Min introduces her protagonist as congenitally subjugated Yunhe, youngest daughter of the youngest wife, who defies her mother’s attempts to bind her feet. Yunhe eventually throws off all connections to her family entirely in her efforts to distinguish herself, ever believing that she is a “peacock among hens.”
Min alternates between the first and third person, allowing her protagonist to speak for herself while placing her in the context of her comrades. After moving to Shanghai to create a new persona as an actress, Yunhe becomes entangled in the emerging Communist movement, soon crossing paths with the revolution leader himself, Mao Zedong. Min insightfully connects Yunhe’s passionate devotion to her political cause. “She believes in the Communist Party the same way she believes in love.”
Ever the actress, Madame Mao plays the parts that will give her the advantages she needs to gain the power she craves. But as her husband gains political power, the romance wanes, and she must struggle the rest of her life to achieve and maintain any clout within her personal and political realms. Navigating the hierarchy of Communist Chinese government requires an unceasing vigilance and cutthroat vindictiveness that ultimately destroys the bearer.
Though Min’s Madame Mao is fully human, her merciless craving for domination ultimately discourages unqualified sympathy from the reader. The novel itself, however, deserves commendation. Her prose, unadorned with superfluous modifiers or punctuation, reflects the simplicity of Madame Mao’s unceasing struggle for fulfillment. Laden with Eastern imagery, beautifully understated, Min’s novel captivates and ravishes.
Susan Vreeland, one of the authors headlining the Writer’s Symposium, will speak about her craft and host a workshop on historical fiction during the conference, February 4-8. She taught high school students in San Diego for 30 years and continues to write.
Susan Vreeland draws from years of travel throughout Europe to craft her historical novels. In Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Vreeland traces the provenance of a forgotten work of art.
Like Tracy Chevalier in Girl with a Pearl Earring, Vreeland weaves a story around Jan Vermeer and his masterpieces. Vreeland’s titular painting, though, is imagined, a canvas supposedly lost to history. Each chapter is a self-contained chronicle of the painting’s effects on the people who encounter it.
Many characters project their feelings onto the subject, a young girl seated before a window with sewing materials idly surrounding her. “I couldn’t keep my eyes from the girl in the painting. What I saw before as vacancy on her face seemed now an irretrievable innocence and deep calm that caused me a pang,” admits a 19th-century possessor after she commits a decidedly un-innocent act.
Through the painting, Vreeland explores the power and impact of a masterpiece. One man squanders his relationships in his tortured devotion to the painting. A woman unwillingly sells it at her husband’s insistence, which irreparably mars her opinion of him.
“That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single individual, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder,” Vreeland said on her Web site of the origin of her novel. “The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains.”
What is the true power of a masterfully executed work? A painting, after all, is just delicately applied pigments. Could a mere image hold such overwhelming irresistibility, that it could drastically transform the lives of real people? Not all of the Vermeer canvas’s owners sever relationships over it. For some, the portrait functions as a minor player in their domestic drama, the memory of a lost love or the means of obtaining a substantial sum of money. But for many, the painting illuminates the hazy, undefined areas of their lives, casting light on unnamed longings or personifying inner conflicts.
Often in the novel, the art serves merely as the catalyst for the varied reactions of those who behold it. Most significant, though, is the fact that the portrait changes these individuals. The power of the work of art comes in its mystifying ability to impact the beholder. Vreeland seems to say that in this way, a painting can alter the world.