A science fiction book set in China, written in China and banned in China was too big of an invitation, so I decided that I needed to read Chan Koonchung’s The Fat Years. It has a fairly basic premise and a love story that dovetail together. Until the truly atrocious ending, I considered it a lighter version of 1Q84. But, unfortunately the ending is so bad that it just destroy’s the book. So, let’s see what went wrong.
It’s 2011 in China and while the rest of the world is still in an economic collapse, China is prosperous, stable and on the rise. Lao Chen is a journalist who is trying to transition into being a novelist, but it isn’t going well. Chen has spent years bouncing between Taiwan, the US and his current location in Beijing. One day, Chen runs into an old friend Fang Caodi, who insists that back in 2009, there was a month that no one remembers. According to most folks, the world economy started crashing and then China announce their Golden Age of Ascendency immediately afterwards. But Caodi remembers that there was a month of scarcity and almost riots in between. He’s been on the search for clues and people who also remember it, but isn’t having much luck.
Little Xi is a former law student and judge who was too revolutionary during a crackdown. She insisted that some people could be innocent. Since then, she’s been jumping from place to place with only her mother (Big Sister Song) knowing how to get in contact with her. Little Xi and Chen used to have a relationship and Chen (after running into her again) realizes that he wants her back, but now he needs to find her. One of the things that Little Xi is hiding from is her own son, Wei Guo. Guo is a diehard Communist and want to go into the government. Little Xi realizes that her own son would be willing to turn her in due to her beliefs, so she goes around trying to find something while hiding from Guo and the world. Chen’s chase to find Little Xi coincides with Caodi’s search for the missing month. And the two stories lead to a desperate move by our protagonists.
With little explained about what actually happened, we move into the 3rd act of the book. The entire 100 page 3rd act consists of a question and answer session where a government official explains exactly what happened before after and during the missing month. It is a horrendous letdown that this novel decides to end with a 100 page essay. Up until that point, I was really enjoying the story, but the ending was so bad, that I really can’t recommend the book. If you decide you do want to check it out, then do yourself a favor and skip the third act. The essay does a decent job in going over how China has changed over the years and what the advantages (and the disadvantages) of the one party dictatorship form of government has going for it. It’s interesting from a political science point of view, but not for a novel.
The main characters are well written. We find out the histories of most of our characters and how they came to their present scenarios. The book itself is well written and the first two acts are paced well with good plot and character development. If Koonchung had nailed the ending, this would have been a really good book. But, as I mentioned above, it is just a disappointment now. Recommended for the first two act, but not recommended for the third.