Elsewhere: 'Wonderful writing' Sarah Hall

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Elsewhere: 'Wonderful writing' Sarah Hall

Elsewhere: 'Wonderful writing' Sarah Hall

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Not long,” Old Stone said. “But we might surprise ourselves—this morning, a search team dug out a man who’d been buried for more than seventy-two hours, still alive.”

Small Bamboo sat down in the armchair. “Bloody hell,” he said, slapping his thigh. “This is a palace.” Young Li and Six Times walked in, carrying a square table. They put it down and flipped up four curved extensions. An enormous round table emerged. As a result of this cosmopolitanism, the stories in Elsewhere are jangly and eclectic, set in wildly different time periods and filled with dissonances. That shit-and-literature theme recurs, in various incarnations, throughout. Elsewhere’s characters seem constantly in abdominal discomfort; someone vomits in five of the nine stories. The act of eating meat takes on a horrifying resonance, in part because characters in two separate stories are presented with dishes made from human flesh. Elsewhere” is Yan Ge’s debut novel written in English, showcasing her talent as a storyteller. The book takes readers on a journey through various time periods and locations, immersing them in a world that is both familiar and foreign. The stories in “Elsewhere” are jangly and eclectic, filled with dissonances and unexpected twists. And it’s this affinity with the periphery that is brought to life in Yan Ge’s short story collection Elsewhere. I told Old Stone about my dream and he laughed for quite a while. “That is a very Zhuangzian dream,” he said.I really, really like Yan Ge’s writing, and some of the stories in ‘Elsewhere’ were genuinely very, very good, but it’s hard not to consider this a bit of an underwhelming collection from someone I consider to be an exceedingly capable author. Too many of the stories, while not entirely unmemorable, were too uninteresting for me, and Yan Ge’s skill with prose was doing the entirety of the heavy lifting for a lot of these stories. I remember having some issues with the writing in ‘Strange Beasts of China’ and it’s nice to see that this was likely due to the translation element. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that she wrote ‘Elsewhere’ in English herself, and in it, her writing feels more polished than ever before, while still retaining its natural awkwardness and oddity that makes it so unique.

The sunken square was brimming with tents, of various sizes and spectacular styles, their colors spanning the full visible spectrum. Small Bamboo pointed at the building at the far end of the square and told me the Little House was on that corner. We descended into the square and wove our way through it. The tents were clustered closely together and cast shadows over one another. People sat outside, eating, chatting, bartering. Vendors elbowed past with their baskets, selling food, magazines, T-shirts, and cosmetics. Kids chased one another, laughing. We steered through, Small Bamboo nodding at acquaintances and friends. Ahead of us, I saw a gigantic scarlet tent. It looked like a castle. Yan’s literary journey took a significant turn when she moved to Ireland for her postgraduate studies. It was during this period that she started writing in English, a challenging yet rewarding endeavor that expanded her literary horizons and introduced her to a global audience. This transition marked a new chapter in Yan’s career, culminating in the publication of “Elsewhere,” her first novel written in English. I marvel at Ge's ability to keep us transfixed in such a range of time periods, places and characters, all of whom are very much alone and in a blurred reality where the ground may be moving under them but they're leaning into the distorted reality. Both of my parents died in 1989,” Small Bamboo said, “my mother at the beginning of the year because of diabetes; my father at the end of year, in prison.” What’s consistent…is an abiding sense of lightness, even when the characters are melancholy or lost….The pleasure of traveling ‘elsewhere,’ as in reading this singular book, is in wandering.” — Wall Street JournalIn Ireland her son was born and then they moved to Norwich in 2018, where Ge still lives. I ask her about the story Shooting an Elephant, where a Chinese woman, Shanshan, gets annoyed by Dubliners shouting “ni hao” (Chinese for “hello”) at her in the street, or asking her to read their Chinese tattoos. Did these things happen to Ge in Ireland? That’s Young Li’s,” Small Bamboo said. “One big living room and three bedrooms for him, his wife, and two kids. There’s even a kitchen inside. God knows where that prawn got it from!” Yan Ge commented: ‘I have been writing in Chinese for eighteen years, and it took me a long time searching to find my voice in a new literary language. The stories in Elsewhere include a polyphony of voices, anti-dualistic propositions and characters whose identities are constantly in flux – this sense of perpetual displacement is what I want to continue to explore and celebrate in my fiction.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
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