海角大神

Readers who tackle Meng Jin鈥檚 pleasurably difficult debut novel, 鈥淟ittle Gods,鈥� will experience both how engaging and disconcerting it is to try to fathom another鈥檚 inner life.

The character with this enigmatic inner life is Su Lan, a rising star in the field of physics in 1980s China. The reader must work backward to assemble a theory of Su Lan鈥檚 identity out of peripheral evidence instead of direct observation. Her story is told not by herself, but by a handful of people in her orbit, including, eventually, her grown daughter, who embarks on a journey across time and space to find her mother鈥檚 origins.聽

The book literally begins with 鈥淭he End,鈥� a chapter in which the heavily pregnant Su Lan enters the delivery unit of a Beijing hospital with her husband. The date is June 3, 1989 鈥� the eve of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Her daughter, Liya, is born a day later amid the chaos; meanwhile, her husband disappears and Su Lan鈥檚 world is shattered. Su Lan begins a long, slow slide into entropy, a motif by which Jin explores the symbiotic processes of self-invention and self-destruction.

Her decline is foreshadowed most strongly when construction workers paint the character聽 (chai, meaning to tear down or take apart) on the side of her aging apartment building. But even when she tries to start afresh by moving to America, she never manages to complete her Ph.D. or publish her theory of time. Years go by, and Liya goes to college. But during Liya鈥檚 first semester, Su Lan dies, alone and seemingly unfulfilled.聽Completely lost and unmoored, Liya drops out of college and flies to China to begin her search for her mother鈥檚 secret history.

Through vignettes of the past, Jin unveils the many facets of Su Lan, beginning with the commentary of a nurse who sees in Su Lan a 鈥渇ace that could become anything with just a few lines of makeup, that, like a mirror, reflects the viewer back upon herself.鈥� Upon this blank canvas, members of Su Lan鈥檚 inner circle pile contradictory observations like layers of paint. Su Lan can 鈥淸make] herself beautiful,鈥� which, in combination with her intellect, inspires a 鈥渒ind of terror鈥� among her male colleagues by completely subverting their misogynistic expectations. There is also something dark at her center, and perhaps 鈥渉er excellence, her beauty, her composure鈥� are all actually 鈥渁n attempt to control鈥� it. But she is so disarming that she can 鈥渒now you only as you knew yourself.鈥�

It鈥檚 clear that none of these descriptions are complete truths, even though each narrator is convinced that he or she knows Su Lan best. Their contradictory accounts invite the reader to preside over a court of competing witnesses. And it鈥檚 a pleasure to sample each of the narrators鈥� worthy digressions into their own fully realized memories and meditations. Some voices are more perspicacious than others 鈥� especially that of Su Lan鈥檚 elderly neighbor Zhu Wen, who sees in Su Lan 鈥渢wo people: the one that moved through the world, and the one that created that other apparent self.鈥�

Like its title, which describes the 鈥渄esperate鈥� power of revolutionary youths, 鈥淟ittle Gods鈥� is full of dizzying contradictions. It speaks at once admiringly and dismissively of the foibles of its subjects. The world it describes is by turns violent and tender, selfish and totally altruistic. Jin treads purposefully over a vast landscape of difficult subjects 鈥� aging, class anxiety, political instability, intellectual insecurity, racism, migration 鈥� unflinchingly deconstructing and then moving beyond each. It is that willingness to follow such threads to their full conclusion, to accept 鈥渟trange consolation鈥� when it comes, which gives 鈥淟ittle Gods鈥� its greatest strength.