Ocean of Words : Stories

Rating:
Summary: Ha Jin's Short Stories Have Tall Stature
Review: Ha Jin brilliantly evokes emotion in short stories that may take some an epic novel to create the same impact. His words are sunbeams bouncing on desolate land and you want to continue despite the heartbreak that you may only survive simply to survive. Never to fully live in the light. He is the most eloquent writer and he allows us to view a world not known to most Americans: China under Mao. Be swept away with words and emotions.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, spare stories
Review: Ha Jin returns again and again to the same setting - the Chinese army encampments on the frozen and tense Sino-Soviet border of the 1970s -- and comes back with wonderful, spare stories. Basically, they are about people who stubbornly remain human - frail, passionate, frightened - despite a system that tries to bend them into something else. I especially like the way Ha Jin chose to tell the story of two young lovers running off in "Too Late"; the joyous scene of camaraderie at the end of "Uncle Piao's Birthday Dinners"; and the complex motivations of the narrator of "The Fellow Townsmen," who does the right thing against his own instincts and his own best interests. I can't wait to read, well, "Waiting" and "Under the Red Flag."

Rating:
Summary: China's Tim O'brien
Review: I loved these stories! Ha Jin does an excellent job at not only writing amusing stories, but he also shows the reader the very nature of Communism in China during the Cultural Revolution. Informative, funny, entertaining, I put the book down only for sleeping and eating (and not even sometimes).

Rating:
Summary: A Terrific Collection of Short Stories
Review: I picked up An Ocean of Words from a staff recommendations section of the bookstore. I am glad that I did. This book is a wonderful collection of short stories. This book was great.

The stories all take place on the border of China and the USSR during the early 1970s when the two communist countries actually came pretty close to war. The stories are actually a microcosim of Communist China as a whole.

The stories are wonderful and I highly recommend this book not just to sinophiles but to anyone who wants to read a great collection of stories.

Rating:
Summary: A Terrific Collection of Short Stories
Review: I picked up An Ocean of Words from a staff recommendations section of the bookstore. I am glad that I did. This book is a wonderful collection of short stories. This book was great.

The stories all take place on the border of China and the USSR during the early 1970s when the two communist countries actually came pretty close to war. The stories are actually a microcosim of Communist China as a whole.

The stories are wonderful and I highly recommend this book not just to sinophiles but to anyone who wants to read a great collection of stories.

Rating:
Summary: Ha Jin's Short Stories Have Tall Stature
Review: I'm very critical of some Chinese writers like Amy Tan for their distortions of a life they haven't experienced. But this doesn't apply to Ha Jin, who survived the Revolution and was a soldier. I really like this collection of stories because Ha Jin excels in writing vignettes by injecting fresh details. Anyone who is curious about Communist China should read this book. Skip his novels though.

Rating:
Summary: Very interesting
Review: I'm very critical of some Chinese writers like Amy Tan for their distortions of a life they haven't experienced. But this doesn't apply to Ha Jin, who survived the Revolution and was a soldier. I really like this collection of stories because Ha Jin excels in writing vignettes by injecting fresh details. Anyone who is curious about Communist China should read this book. Skip his novels though.

Rating:
Summary: Style, content and context impeccable...a gem.
Review: Mr. Ha Jin writes succinctly, with an apparent insider's knowledge of the Chinese army, the soldiers and the period. The writing is to the point, impeccable; it is this simplicity and the directness of the the narration that enhance the context. And this very context, united in a dispersed manner by individual stories, gives one the sensation of having been there. An excellent book, highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Ocean full of Stars
Review: When I read Ocean of Words, I was immediately reminded of two works by "the enemy" from this work, Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time and Tolstoy's Hadji Murad. All three works deal with fear, nature and the other. All three are strangely at peace with their situation and surrounding. All three are great. After reading this collection, I ran out and bought The Bridegroom and Waiting. Neither of these works rose to the level of this collection. This is one of the best short story collections published in the last twenty years. I would recommend this collection to anyone.