I’ve read some weird stuff since getting into literature in translation last year. That’s part of the appeal, right? Translated lit is an easy way to find something different, something experimental, maybe something surreal and dreamlike. Last year, I discovered László Krasznahorkai and his intensely weird story collection The World Goes On. I didn’t really “get it,” but I liked it. I also discovered Olga Tokarczuk, who won the Man Booker International Prize with a novel that defies genre. She calls her writing style a “constellation” and I don’t know if we really have that in English. I just finished an odd little book called The Order of the Day, also a prize winner, that is classified as a récit or an “account” rather than straight up non-fiction.

I could go on: a novel told in Facebook-status-like headlines, a speculative fiction about a world where only the elderly are healthy, whatever the heck Comemadre is about.

But now, I think I’ve hit my limit. I’ve found a translated novel that is too difficult to classify, too unmoored, too opaque, just too weird: Love in the New Millennium.

Lacking the intellectual capacity to do an actual review, I have elected to comment on a few random passages, which I quickly took pictures of before returning it to the library.

Okay, a few things first:

• Although I couldn’t really get anywhere with this book, I did read it rather voraciously, and finished it, despite never understanding what I was reading. That’s… something. I had a similar experience to Michael at Knowledge Lost, I think.
• Reading this book did dredge up several odd memories – not the kind I tend to dwell on, but things I hadn’t thought about in years. I couldn’t begin to tell you why, but they did have to do with love, and the then-new millennium…
• Eventually I just thought of this as a very, very long poem, and that kind of helped.

Now, to the random pages, presented roughly in order:

Okay, this is a relatively normal page, in that we are with the (apparent) main character and she’s describing her relationship with her father, and with a Mr. You. Let’s try again…

Okay, this is more like it. Wei Bo is another main character. He’s Cuilan’s boyfriend. I do appreciate how everyone eats noodles in this book. But this gives you an idea of the weirdly disjointed dialogue. There’s also a fair amount of Chinese onomatopoeia.

Okay, here we go. Non sequiturs about going to the gallows! More onomatopoeia! Pachinko parlours that appear and disappear!

If you’re thinking I cherry-picked these and they’re out of context, here’s the beginning of a chapter. By the way, characters start randomly referring to themselves and those they’re speaking to in the third person around the 200 page mark.

Some of the weirdest parts have to do with Xiao Yuan’s adventures in teaching. I laughed out loud at “She had become the real student” because that’s such a fucking cliche plunked into the middle of a book with no other cliches or even things you can understand…

Okay, last one. At the end, a minor character suddenly becomes the main character, and she has to follow her boyfriend through a sewer, because of reasons. And then he gives her a scorpion, because of other reasons.

Here are a couple other resources, if you decide to take this on. Love in the New Millennium was longlisted (but not shortlisted) for the Man Booker International Prize, and is longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award. Can Xue won the BTBA a couple years ago, so she’s got a fighting chance. And best of luck to Ms. Can. I have no idea what she’s doing here, but she… sure did it.

• You can read Eileen Myle’s foreword here
• A good review on Goodreads, with links to…
• A positive review on Full Stop
• A less positive review on The Arts Fuse