Review: Burn (烧) by Chu Dao (初岛)
Oct. 6th, 2023 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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baihe_mediaAn initial version of this review was originally posted on my personal journal. Again, I thought I might as well clean it up and cross-post it here.
Me: When it comes to baihe subgenres, the ones I care for least are contemporary romance and showbiz. I dislike insta-lust/love. I'm also wary of tragic endings.
I read the Chinese original of the novel on Changpei. There is an ongoing English fan translation of the novel.
Me: When it comes to baihe subgenres, the ones I care for least are contemporary romance and showbiz. I dislike insta-lust/love. I'm also wary of tragic endings.
Burn: Not only am I all those things, but I'll end up being your personal best baihe novel of 2022, and a strong contender for your personal best novel of 2022 full stop.
As mentioned in the novels resource post, baihe audiences does not have the same issues over 'bury your gays' as contemporary Western-published genre fiction. Also, unlike genre romance, baihe does not require a happily ever after or even a happily for now. It is therefore entirely legitimate to end a baihe novel in tragedy, and Burn is almost certainly the best-known of these tragic novels (at least among mainland baihe readers, and likely other Sinophone readers). If you ask mainland baihe readers to recommend novels with tragic endings, Burn will almost certainly be among the first, if not the first, on many lists.
The premise of the novel is in many ways a simple one. Xiao Zhou (肖舟), an assistant photographer, has a chance encounter with up-and-coming model Lan Shan (蓝山) at a bar. They end up sleeping together that night (Xiao Zhou: 'We fucked four times. It was the night of August 31st. The weather was cool, but I felt as if I were burning), and then unexpectedly encounter each other again at the studio where Xiao Zhou works. Thus begins a tangled tale of mutual(?) obsession. From the beginning, the author sets up a sort of zero-sum choice (between their never-clearly-articulated relationship and their professional ambitions) for both leads. Xiao Zhou's photographs of Lan Shan have a certain brilliant, luminous quality to them that can't be replicated by anyone else, so it's in Lan Shan's interest for Xiao Zhou to photograph her — and no other models — exclusively; on the other hand, it's impossible Xiao Zhou to make a career out of photographing a single, promising but not world-famous model. They break up (Xiao Zhou: 'We were never actually together, so was it even possible for us to break up?), but keep drifting back into each other's orbit, although they never quite actually reconcile. The novel ends with Lan Shan's suicide after she fails to win a major modeling award that she'd spent her whole life working towards (because it was a promise she made to her dead mother). Xiao Zhou has a complete mental breakdown on hearing the news, in part because she feels deeply culpable. This is because Lan Shan's campaign for the award was based on the last set of photos and videos Xiao Zhou took of her — images which are professionally competent, but lack that elusive, luminous quality that characterised Xiao Zhou's earlier photos of Lan Shan, quite possibly because Xiao Zhou is no longer as obsessively in love with Lan Shan as she previously was.
What gives the novel much of its appeal is Xiao Zhou's very distinctive narrative voice: she's spiky, is inclined towards profanity, has a knack for describing things in unexpected yet completely accurate ways (Xiao Zhou, on leaving the apartment she previously shared with Lan Shan: 'from an omniscient point of view I must have looked very small, like an ant who'd run away from her anthill, and probably one who was sick in the head as well. A depressed ant.') and is both deeply jaded and cynical and hopelessly romantic at the same time (the novel leaves it up to the reader to decide if her cynicism is a cover for her fundamentally romantic nature, or whether her fits of romanticism are to cover up an essentially cynical core which she's unwilling to face up to). Having read quite a few contemporary Western-published romances where the character voices tend to be an indistinguishable bland burble, this was a revelation. The author's mastery of tone is also impressive: even in the earliest chapters, where Xiao Zhou and Lan Shan are basically in their honeymoon period, there's an uneasy edge of foreboding throughout, a sense that disaster is just around the corner.
There are of course flaws to this novel. More could have been made in the earlier chapters about Xiao Zhou's commitment to her craft, further intensifying the tension of her needing to choose between her craft and her relationship with Lan Shan, and much better use could have been made of some of the secondary characters. The latter is particularly true for Yang Xi (阳晞), another up-and-coming model and one of Lan Shan's rivals. Yang Xi expresses interest in Xiao Zhou after seeing the latter's photos of Lan Shan, and Xiao Zhou does eventually end up photographing Yang Xi, which also helps her break out of a creative dry spell. In a number of ways, Yang Xi is set up as a foil for Lan Shan: for instance, she's introduced smoking sophisticated little cigarettes, which she offers to Xiao Zhou, while Lan Shan has categorically forbidden Xiao Zhou from smoking at all. Because of this, I was expecting Xiao Zhou to develop a romantic/emotional relationship with Yang Xi that would parallel her relationship with Lan Shan — yet Yang Xi fades out of the story quite quickly, and only resurfaces occasionally to provide plot-relevant services/advice. I suspect that at least some of these issues were due to the serialised nature of the novel, and the author writing more or less on the fly — in her author's notes, for instance, she comments that she wasn't even sure how Lan Shan felt about Xiao Zhou until halfway through the novel. Still, these flaws do not take away from the novel's emotional heft.
As mentioned in the novels resource post, baihe audiences does not have the same issues over 'bury your gays' as contemporary Western-published genre fiction. Also, unlike genre romance, baihe does not require a happily ever after or even a happily for now. It is therefore entirely legitimate to end a baihe novel in tragedy, and Burn is almost certainly the best-known of these tragic novels (at least among mainland baihe readers, and likely other Sinophone readers). If you ask mainland baihe readers to recommend novels with tragic endings, Burn will almost certainly be among the first, if not the first, on many lists.
The premise of the novel is in many ways a simple one. Xiao Zhou (肖舟), an assistant photographer, has a chance encounter with up-and-coming model Lan Shan (蓝山) at a bar. They end up sleeping together that night (Xiao Zhou: 'We fucked four times. It was the night of August 31st. The weather was cool, but I felt as if I were burning), and then unexpectedly encounter each other again at the studio where Xiao Zhou works. Thus begins a tangled tale of mutual(?) obsession. From the beginning, the author sets up a sort of zero-sum choice (between their never-clearly-articulated relationship and their professional ambitions) for both leads. Xiao Zhou's photographs of Lan Shan have a certain brilliant, luminous quality to them that can't be replicated by anyone else, so it's in Lan Shan's interest for Xiao Zhou to photograph her — and no other models — exclusively; on the other hand, it's impossible Xiao Zhou to make a career out of photographing a single, promising but not world-famous model. They break up (Xiao Zhou: 'We were never actually together, so was it even possible for us to break up?), but keep drifting back into each other's orbit, although they never quite actually reconcile. The novel ends with Lan Shan's suicide after she fails to win a major modeling award that she'd spent her whole life working towards (because it was a promise she made to her dead mother). Xiao Zhou has a complete mental breakdown on hearing the news, in part because she feels deeply culpable. This is because Lan Shan's campaign for the award was based on the last set of photos and videos Xiao Zhou took of her — images which are professionally competent, but lack that elusive, luminous quality that characterised Xiao Zhou's earlier photos of Lan Shan, quite possibly because Xiao Zhou is no longer as obsessively in love with Lan Shan as she previously was.
What gives the novel much of its appeal is Xiao Zhou's very distinctive narrative voice: she's spiky, is inclined towards profanity, has a knack for describing things in unexpected yet completely accurate ways (Xiao Zhou, on leaving the apartment she previously shared with Lan Shan: 'from an omniscient point of view I must have looked very small, like an ant who'd run away from her anthill, and probably one who was sick in the head as well. A depressed ant.') and is both deeply jaded and cynical and hopelessly romantic at the same time (the novel leaves it up to the reader to decide if her cynicism is a cover for her fundamentally romantic nature, or whether her fits of romanticism are to cover up an essentially cynical core which she's unwilling to face up to). Having read quite a few contemporary Western-published romances where the character voices tend to be an indistinguishable bland burble, this was a revelation. The author's mastery of tone is also impressive: even in the earliest chapters, where Xiao Zhou and Lan Shan are basically in their honeymoon period, there's an uneasy edge of foreboding throughout, a sense that disaster is just around the corner.
There are of course flaws to this novel. More could have been made in the earlier chapters about Xiao Zhou's commitment to her craft, further intensifying the tension of her needing to choose between her craft and her relationship with Lan Shan, and much better use could have been made of some of the secondary characters. The latter is particularly true for Yang Xi (阳晞), another up-and-coming model and one of Lan Shan's rivals. Yang Xi expresses interest in Xiao Zhou after seeing the latter's photos of Lan Shan, and Xiao Zhou does eventually end up photographing Yang Xi, which also helps her break out of a creative dry spell. In a number of ways, Yang Xi is set up as a foil for Lan Shan: for instance, she's introduced smoking sophisticated little cigarettes, which she offers to Xiao Zhou, while Lan Shan has categorically forbidden Xiao Zhou from smoking at all. Because of this, I was expecting Xiao Zhou to develop a romantic/emotional relationship with Yang Xi that would parallel her relationship with Lan Shan — yet Yang Xi fades out of the story quite quickly, and only resurfaces occasionally to provide plot-relevant services/advice. I suspect that at least some of these issues were due to the serialised nature of the novel, and the author writing more or less on the fly — in her author's notes, for instance, she comments that she wasn't even sure how Lan Shan felt about Xiao Zhou until halfway through the novel. Still, these flaws do not take away from the novel's emotional heft.
I read the Chinese original of the novel on Changpei. There is an ongoing English fan translation of the novel.
