An interesting and thoughtful novel set in China, where an environmental disaster have been covered up. Paul's a good character and this is a good read.

Published by Atria / 37 INK on May 2, 2017

Two intertwined stories are told in The Language of Solitude. One is political and the other is not. Both are romantic but in different ways.

In its setting, mood, and emphasis on romance, The Language of Solitude is similar to Jan-Philipp Sendker’s popular The Art of Hearing Heartbeats. I think the political story in The Lanuage of Solitude is more successful than the straightforward romance in the nonpolitical story. The romance in the political story struck me as being deeper and more meaningful, and its depiction of oppression and corruption in China stand as a lesson about the need for vigilance in maintaining an open and ethical government in the United States.

As in The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, The Language of Solitude is set in Hong Kong and the main character is an idealized male who suffers deeply yet opens himself to love. Paul Leibovitz lives in relative isolation on the island of Lamma. He lost his son and, at 53, is afraid to father another. Before she boards a ferry to a neighboring island, his current lover, Christine, tells Paul that he is hungry for love. That may be Paul’s defining characteristic, although Sendker makes clear that Paul is also compassionate, sensitive, empathic, perfectly attuned to his lover’s needs and moods, and full of emotional depth (in short, the kind of men who are easier to find in fiction than in the real world).

Paul has learned to distrust the illusion of the future, to be suspicious of happiness, to take nothing for granted. Christine Wu, on the other hand, is a dreamer, a woman who places her trust in fate. Christine wonders if Paul is living on the island of Lamma to place himself in exile, but Paul is remarkably dependent on others for someone who has gone into exile. If he doesn’t hear from Christine for a couple of days, he drives himself mad worrying that their relationship is imperiled. So, Paul is ideal but also annoyingly needy, although some readers may find that neediness appealing if it taken as a sign of his love for Christine.

In fact, the relationship is imperiled because, having received unwelcome news of the future from an astrologer, Christine is afraid of the relationship, for Paul’s sake. To placate Christine, Paul also visits the astrologer, and some of the nonpolitical love story is driven by the astrologer’s forecast of his future.

The political story begins when Christine’s brother, Da Long, after being absent and presumed dead during Christine’s lifetime, suddenly resurfaces with a mysterious request. That situation takes Paul and Christine to mainland China where Christine learns the surprising reason why she was summoned to the place of her birth after so many years.

Da Long’s story, which involves his romance with Min Fang during the Cultural Revolution, is more interesting than that of Paul and Christine, if only because it is steeped in a dramatic history. Paul eventually pursues the cause of Min Fang’s current illness, creating conflict with her son, Xiao Hu, and her daughter, Yin-Yin. The conflict illuminates cultural differences between traditional Chinese (who tend to accept things as fate if they feel powerless to change them) and westerners (who often look for ways to change things they do not want to accept).

“A loving heart never gives up” says a character in The Language of Solitude. The story advances that the theme, as well as the need for, and difficulty of achieving, reconciliation and forgiveness. The political themes have to do with the corruption that follows when a government and businesses become too chummy, the false reliance on “national security” to cover up wrongdoing, the importance of environmental regulations, and the power of the internet.

I thought some of the romantic scenes involving Paul and Christine were a bit sappy. I recognize that some readers will take that as a warning and others will deem it a reason to read the book.

While the other characters all seem credible, I had trouble accepting Paul as a real person. For someone who has lived in or near China for 30 years, Paul is remarkably ignorant of Mainland China’s repressive politics and corrupt government. Or perhaps he’s unreasonably optimistic, which seems inconsistent with everything we learn about him. Maybe he needs to be ignorant to advance the story, but his naivete is not well explained.

The novel’s ending is a bit forced, perhaps to make it fit within an astrologer’s prediction about Paul’s future in a way that will not displease readers. Of course, people who believe in fortune telling are always forcing random events to fit their interpretations of a prediction, but I think the use of astrology in the novel, no matter how important it is in Chinese culture, could have been handled with more subtlety.

On balance, I liked the political story and the romance involving Da Long and his wife. I was less interested in Paul and his romance with Christine. As always, I admired Sendker’s graceful prose. The Language of Solitude is worth a reader’s time, but like other Sendker novels, only parts of this one left me feeling satisfied.

RECOMMENDED

THE LANGUAGE OF SOLITUDE is the latest from Jan-Philipp Sendker who may be most well-known for his excellent international best seller, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats. I highly recommend both books. THE LANGUAGE OF SOLITUDE features characters, Paul and Christine, whom Sendker had introduced previously in Whispering Shadows. Paul is an ex-pat who has lived in China and Hong Kong for decades and Christine, who fled mainland China, is his partner. Together they are drawn into a mysterious and dangerous situation involving Christine's family on the mainland.

Like Sendker's other works, THE LANGUAGE OF SOLITUDE is a beautiful commentary on the human spirit, a reflection on impact of the Cultural Revolution, and an attempt to educate about the influence of Chinese culture such as I Ching and astrology. As I read, I always find much to highlight:
"He who knows others is clever; He who knows himself is enlightened."
"Are our lives the most precious possessions we have? Or is it the way our lives are lived?"
"I'm not cynical," Xiao Hu objected. "I'm pragmatic. That's a big difference. At least in China."

That last quote refers to a debate about whether or not to try to seek justice for industrial pollution. In his fiction, Sendker attempts to contrast the natural reaction from a Western versus a Chinese perspective as his characters grapple with a potentially corrupt and nascent system of regulations. This tension was recently illustrated in the real world, too, in "The Most Neglected Threat to Public Health in China is Toxic Soil" published this week in The Economist. It quotes the government's 2014 national soil survey which indicated that 16.1% of all soil and 19.4% of China's farmland was contaminated by pollutants and metals such as lead, cadmium and arsenic; [see accompanying map for a visual representation of that story.]

I continue to look forward to more from Sendker; other titles I have previously reviewed include: Whispering Shadows and A Well-Tempered Heart. THE LANGUAGE OF SOLITUDE received a starred review from Library Journal.

Links in live post:
http://treviansbookit.blogspot.com/2015/04/whispering-shadows-by-jan-philipp.html
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21723128-and-fixing-it-will-be-hard-and-costly-most-neglected-threat-public-health-china
http://treviansbookit.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-well-tempered-heart-by-jan-philippe.html

Probably anyone could sit down and ink out a story if they put their mind to it. But there are only those most talented who can show as story as well as tell in language that penetrates beyond the emotional word. Sendker offers that excellence in this suspenseful of a journey of discovery in a world of Chinese politics.

The Language of Solitude by Jan-Philipp Sendker tells the story of a western journalist living I'm Hong Kong, Paul. His Chinese love, Christine, revives a letter from her brother she thought had died. This sets the story for a journey to China to fight for the justice of her family.

This story is filled with multiple storylines. It tells of old China as well as the more modern industrialized one. We are also shown the differences between western thought on justice and the Chinese. I really enjoyed these different aspects of this book.

The one thing I didn't really like was that Paul seemed to be perfect, as he spoke several languages flawlessly, while his Chinese counterparts seemed to be flawed.

I think that this book is written beautifully, it was hard to put down. I love the authors style of writing and can't wait to read more.

I would recommended this book to fans of books on other cultures.

I acknowledge that I received this book free of charge from NetGalley and Atria Books in exchange for my honest opinion of it.

Not a usual fan of mysteries, I found this alluring mainly for the setting, China. Characters, especially Paul Leibovitz and his partner, Christine, are not terribly appealing, and I found them difficult to like or care about. Mysterious happenings during the Cultural Revolution. Not really my cup of tea. Note that this is part of a series, with this being the second. Perhaps I need to read the first to really appreciate this book.

Jan-Philipp Sendker has a way with words. His prose is simply beautiful. Melodic even. He writes about characters whose lives you want to care deeply about. And it is because of this that I truly wanted to love this story. And yet, it left me wanting. I wanted more from Jan-Philipp Sendker. Because I know he has it to give – I witnessed it in his first novel, the Art of Hearing Heartbeats, and I know he is capable. Unfortunately, here – he didn’t deliver. 3.5 Stars.

The Language of Solitude is a beautifully written novel about the intersecting lives of several individuals. The first is Paul, a lonely westerner, who lives in Hong Kong and has previously lost everything, until he meets Christine, a Chinese woman, with whom he finds love and who makes him care about living again. As a young girl, Christine and her mother fled China to the safety of Hong Kong, where they have remained. Unbeknownst to her, her older brother Da Long (who she thought had passed away,) has been living in China all of these years. In need of help, he summons her to China. Scared to travel alone, she enlists the help of her beloved, Paul and together, they travel to meet her brother and his two children: his daughter Yin-Yin and son Xiau Hu and find that her brother’s wife Min Fang is bed ridden, lame and mute from what has been misdiagnosed as a stroke. Paul, a former journalist, finds that her symptoms trigger memories of story that he investigated long ago - of people who got sick in a village due to a company dumping chemicals into a lake and who were victims of mercury poisoning. He therefore takes it upon himself to do some digging, and he discovers that Min Fang and several others in her village ate fish from a contaminated lake and were unknowingly poisoned. He and Yin-Yin then decide to try and fight the Chinese government and get justice for her family. Yet the laws in China don't work the way they do in the western world and thing run amuck, putting Yin-Yin's life in serious danger. Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, Christine is fighting her own personal battle, with her mother and Paul. During her struggle, she must come face to face with her past.

In my opinion, it was the simplicity of his first novel, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, (along with the beautiful writing), that made it so special, and that was lacking in this novel. I felt that Jan-Philip Sendker tried to tie together the lives of too many characters and therefore made the storyline complex, which was unnecessary and in doing much was lost v gained. While the writing here was lovely, it was not enough to save the story itself.

Thank you to NetGalley, Atria Books and Jan-Philip Sendker for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review Published on NetGalley and Goodreads on 2/10/17.

Will be published on Amazon on 5/2/17.

The Language of Solitude is the story of Paul Leibovitz who travels to a village outside Shanghai with his partner Christine when she receives a letter from her long-assumed-dead brother. There, he uncovers a terrible incident involving the villagers' health and the most powerful chemical company in China. There may be some mild spoilers below.

I struggled with reading this work. I found the characters dislikable and pigeonholed into characteristics and, even worse, stereotypes. The main character Paul, a foreign man who seems to be depicted as incredibly perfect from his flawless Mandarin and Cantonese to his ironclad sense of justice, was unrealistic and upsetting in his hypocrisies. All the Chinese people in the book are painted as passive, cowardly, ignorant, or just blossoming into confidence under Paul's tutelage.

Paul, for whom a huge part of his life seems to be his clingy love for Christine, becomes rapidly (almost unbelievably so) involved with Christine's rediscovered brother's family without discussing with Christine and despite her displeasure and her needing him. He is presumptive and brash, from making decisions concerning Christine's family without discussing with her to refusing to understand Chinese cultural differences (these are more generally portrayed in the novel from a distinctly foreign perspective, despite some sections being written from a Chinese person's view). Yin-Yin, the niece, is painted as a naive, unassuming, aspiring musician who only gains confidence and strength with Paul's help and whose youth and inexperience is emphasized in everything from her emails containing little punctuation and rambling sentences in comparison to Paul's grammatically correct and succinct ones. The other secondary characters are similarly one-dimensional, and any growth the characters experience are sudden and jarring.

The world described in this novel seems more akin to how a thriller would read, where monsters lurk around every corner in the terror that is the mainland China, where people are secreted away and intimidation runs rampant. And perhaps this is not without some merit, but the exact situations also are not written in a particularly believable manner. The story also seems to suffer from a lack of focus, with no particular growth in either the overarching topic or in character development.

All in all, a disappointing read, and a depiction of Chinese people and China that I found not particularly nuanced and or deserving of the hugely complex culture that exists in China. Elements were most definitely included in the novel, representative of the author's stated interaction with China, but the delicate relationships and balances between those aspects seemed presumptive and discordantly written. For me, it is difficult to read a tale where a foreign man come swooping in to try to affect change in Chinese people who are painted as backwardly superstitious, overwhelmingly afraid, and unfashionably unidimensional without him.

Thanks to the publisher for an advance digital copy in exchange for a fair review.