Daughter of Calamity, by Rosalie M Lin - John
This is a carefully crafted world of city buildings, heavily influenced with Chinese culture and religion as it met the West head on with its speakeasies and dance clubs; this book was a delight for me from start to finish. Marrying poetic and descriptive writing, Lin made it easy to envision the world in which her protagonist Jingwen inhabited; the world of Shanghai at a time of Jazz clubs and dancing.
Adding to the environment, we have strong characters throughout, the interplay between them all flowing from one page to the next, following Jingwen as she battles history and dreams forced on her, with her own desires and plans, to make her way in the world. Ultimately she either succeeds in achieving the command of all this, or she fails, to be yet another dancer lost in the mire of Jazz-age Shanghai, but for that, I will leave the reader to reach their own conclusion of the story.
Swiftly it became clear that, enveloped in the descriptions of the major city out of our time, a story was being woven in the form of one of my favourite authors, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. A true revolutionary in the genre he created of magical realism, I doubt he would be unimpressed with Rosalie M Lin’s own mastery of the pen here.
Simply put, I found this book quite wonderful, and was instantly hooked.
John
