Rating: 
Summary: vivid, engrossing and soothing
Review: This novel is very vivid, engrossing, tells about the nature of human beings, every chapter has some hidden meaning, full of practical truth, a bit of philosophy, sometimes very touching.
Initially you will feel it is wastage of time reading this novel, but as , you move slowly , chapter by chapter you will realise the essence of the novel. In nutshell it seems that the book itself has a soul, and you are face to face with her.If you have not been to villages, moving among high rise scrappers, concrete jungle, wants to know about the basic human nature, wish to roam in the scenic beauties, wish to be in nature's lap , I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: The Perfect Post-Modern Novel
Review: A more self-critical, self-referential, post-modern novel could not be written. Now that it has been done, hopefully it will go out of style. Literary theory, Chinese philosophy, and post-modern Western philosophy (which itself has a pre-occupation with literary theory) are Gao Xingjian's primary concerns in this book. His characters are I, he, she, and you. I creates you so that I am not lonely, and together you and I create he and she. But you and I trade places in the middle of the story. Further, sometimes the narrator seems to be the author, but at other times the narrator seems to be a creation. Although this reviewer is not bright enough to figure out what all of this is supposed to mean, for me it was about the fantasy lives so many of us live to avoid ourselves. The story itself wasn't hard to follow. As an uncondemning look at our mental worlds and fantasies, it is a successful, interesting, thought-provoking story. I read it because I am interested in Chinese culture. The characters encounter various scholars and religious figures in their plotless adventures, and these encounters are a bit of a glimpse into China as Xingjian remembers it. Some familiarity with Chinese geography and religion will help readers.
The book caused a bit of a controversy in China for its sexual content. But in a Western context, it is unremarkable in this respect.
I ranked it so low, not because of its literary pre-occupations, but because it is very slow and hard to read. It doesn't pull a reader along. Perhaps in Chinese it resembles poetry; certainly there are some beautiful passages even in translation. Certainly some can inspire rich philosophical reflection. People who like to read and think hard about their reading will like this novel. People who desire entertainment will find it too heavy.
Rating: 
Summary: The Nobel Committee knew what it was doing
Review: This is a marvelous book. The writing mixes folklore with existentialism. I can't recommend it highly enough. I've been reading books on China like Wild Geese, which has a compelling story but the style was mediocre. Here we get literature and a glimpse into life in China. I wish he wrote more novels.
Rating: 
Summary: A pile of dung
Review: I bought this book because Gao's books are banned in China, so I wanted to know what all the sensation was about. After finishing this book (having numerous naps in between), I found nothing offensive. This was a very long and boring book. The random uses of You, I, and He is just a nuisance. I can't believe this guy won the Nobel Prize, standing with great writers like Morrison and Steinbeck.
Rating: 
Summary: 528-page Fortune Cookie
Review: The author of this Nobel Prize-winning novel was born in China in 1940. After becoming a renowned writer both nationally and internationally, he went into exile, settling in France in 1987. "Soul Mountain" was first published 3 years later in Taiwan. The leading character in this autobiographical novel is a writer who is considered persona non grata by the government. After being wrongly diagnosed with lung cancer, he sets out on a spiritual journey through China in the hope of finding his true self. These themes reflect the author's own experiences. He was also wrongly diagnosed with lung cancer and left Beijing for political reasons to travel overseas. The name of the novel comes from the destination of a person the protagonist meets on a train. After this meeting, he is also filled with an urge to visit Soul Mountain, but doesn't know how to get there. Instead he goes to a giant panda reserve deep in the mountains, visits tribal villages, and stops at an ancient city to muse on the great poets of the past. He also visits his childhood home on the Yangtze River only to find that it has been completely modernized. The message of the book seems to be finding contentment in our lives. The narrator encounters people satisfied with what they are, such as a ranger living peacefully in a remote area without any concern for money or prestige. He also meets a traveling monk who used to be a doctor before, and asks him why he became a monk. One of the tricks Gao uses is the ambiguous use of personal pronouns. He meets 'her' during his odyssey, and enriches the narrative by telling her numerous stories, but who she is remains unclear. Because the narrator is on a spiritual journey as much as a physical one, we are left unsure as to whether he finally reaches Soul Mountain. Using the journey as a metaphor for life, this novel tries to explore many of the issues that face us in life. For some, this will fill a spiritual vacuum and seem very profound, but for others - especially cynics like me - this will seem as profound as a 528-page fortune cookie.
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Summary: This one needs Cliff Notes
Review: I thought it was a joke when I found there were Cliff Notes for "Snow Falling on Cedars" a wonderful book. Now, I truly believe for us lesser minds that we could dearly use a Cliff Notes to accompany Soul Mountain--tedious, obstruse, awfully hard to plow through.
Rating:
Summary: Mountain in the Mind
Review: Gao Xingjian offers us a kaleidoscope of vivid, visual images: gamblers with pieces of paper stuck on their faces and foreheads, Grandpa Stone of SilverMine Gully intoning strings of incantations, bandit chief playing finger guessing games, a woodcarver's last carving, a likeness of the Goddess Tian luo, the man who lost his arm to a Qichen Snake..... Amongst these characters, the author searches for "authentic reality." He peels off layer after layer of misperceptions, but fails to find anything or anyone satisfying his search. He keeps moving. His mind keeps moving. Commenting on one of his companions, the author observes: "He is a spontaneous creature with an untrammeled mind, I think to myself. My predicament lies in my always seeking to be self-activated and wanting to search for my soul. However the problem is if my soul manifested itself would I be able to comprehend it? And even if I were able to comprehend it,what would it lead to?" (page 202) There it is. Are not the mountains, not in China, but in his mind?
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Summary: Insufferable
Review: I found this book to be one of the most painful reads I have ever attempted. I was reading it for a book club. I would have gladly traded reading a chapter for a trip to the dentist. The author puts it best at one chapter near the end. He says that reading the chapter was optional. The changes in perspective, the journey - it was all pointless. I hated this book with a passion!
Rating:
Summary: The Intense Pleasure of the Journey
Review: Soul Mountain is a beautiful book. It is a spherical tapestry of a man's journey inward and outward, surrounding us in the myths, the landscapes, the laneways and the back street temples of China past and present. In the first pages, the narrator relates how he decided to go off to find Lingshan - 'ling' meaning 'soul or spirit' and 'shan' meaning 'mountain' - through a chance encounter with a stranger on a train. From there the identities of the narrator and the stranger become interwoven, just as the search for the elusive mountain at the source of the You river takes us through the painful, ephemeral beauty of personal life and national history. Gao Xingjian is a master of the visual: I found myself continually following his images in my mind, ending up far away from the printed page, back in my own wanderings alone in China. Soul Mountain is not a linear novel that can be rushed through or read diagonally.Meetings with friends or strangers, attempts at conversation, lines of poetry, real or made up stories, incidents and musings flow together like leaves on the surface of a stream. And like leaves, they touch each other, carry each other along for a while and then separate to continue their journeys alone. The I-narrator is transformed into he then you then she, just as the eagle rock in the night forest becomes an old woman shaman, a beautiful girl and a terrifying demon. The novel works through association and evocation, with a powerful sense of the significance of place and time in an individual's life and no need to create anything more binding than purely personal order. This doesn't mean that it is chaotic or illegible. You get so caught up in it that you accept the uncertainties of where you are going because of the intense pleasure of the journey there.
Rating:
Summary: A journey
Review: This book is a journey. I found it brilliantly disorienting and disorienting-ly brilliant. There are beautiful chapters in this book which make you pause, take off your glasses and think. Located throughout China, you _will_ find yourself lost in the mountains, on slow boat rides through reed clogged rivers, stuck in the mud of emaciated lakes, and in Gao Xingjian's nightmares. The use of personal pronouns is subtle and fascinating. As a reader, I didn't always feel free to my own daydreams about the narrative but found myself truly tied with the characters in thought - this successful effect is worthy of a Nobel Prize. Soul Mountain isn't about characters or narrative, it's like sitting down with someone who's going to share with you their fragments of fears, memories, theories and nightmares and dreams. Gao Xingjian doesn't need to develop characters in the traditional sense because often the people in these chapters are struggling with issues that are part of humanity and myth.
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