Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Brothers

by Yu Hua, a novel of 641 pages, originally in two volumes consisting of over half a million characters.

A story of brotherhood and what "family" can do if you only let it. Gets somewhat strange (exotic? beyond the "commonplace fantastic" ? is he out of his MIND?) towards the end, but knowing the wide traverse of this tale, it deserves a spectacular ending.

"this can be explained by the principle that ..." the more extreme the behavior of the characters in a story in the telling, the more explosive must be the conclusion, otherwise the closing is merely an inappropriate and unsatifying whimper.