The Butcher's Wife and Other Stories by Li Ang

The Butcher's Wife and Other Stories Reviews

• 
  Aubrey

  4.5/5
  
  Part of why I enjoy seeking out books at library sales is, in addition to an experience far more rewarding than a click in the frigid halls of the evil incarnate know as Amazon, my lack of patience when it comes to purchasing the exact edition often rewards me. I pick up a combined Howards End and A Room With A View and like the first far more than the originally intended second, I peruse the entirety of Quicksand in addition to Passing and find the less popular Q of far more appeal than the initially sought out P, and now this: a solely searched for novella with some accessory short stories trailing behind which do more to ameliorate the titular work than I could’ve imagined. I don’t always take a chance on a partial bibliography, adding series like The Story of the Stone and Journey to the West piecemeal to my GR data bank just in case I need an escape hatch, but Ang’s particular collection was short and, thanks to the reputation of her inimitable TBW, I’d a good feeling we’d get along.
  
  If you really want to piss someone off, start poking at their archetypes. Should they be one of the rare few who looks at them full in the face and puts them through critical hoops every chance they get, you’re in luck. If they’re one of those who whine about “stories” and “likable characters” and panic whenever the ideological bones start vivisecting through the skin of plot and setting, ‘tis unfortunate. Don’t worry, though. You’ll still be able to recommend them this, but don’t bother asking them about anti-Freud or 20th century history of Taiwan or what love and sex and a woman and a man really mean in an age that’s still getting used to the fact that marital relations can be legally defined as rape. Stick with the imagery and the psychological impetus and you’ll be just fine, although I’d personally grab my breadsticks and skedaddle if they start talking about “magical realism” and all that othering crap.
  
  I mentioned Bolaño in a update for this and I’ll do it again, cause here’s the thing I’ve found about that much beloved author and others that are of similar appeal. What the official academic/GR stance is on Savage Detectives and 2666 is, I’ve no idea and don’t really care, but mine is appreciating the wedge those works drive into the heart of the present and pierce down into the past without ever using it as an excuse to be lazy. By laziness I mean, yeah, morality’s changeover the years. Yeah, you can’t really judge everyone that did horrible things back then cause they’re dead and we still exist on the guidelines they fought and were executed for. Yeah, the past is a foreign country, but it’ll still kill you with rules you were never aware of until the moment you were unlucky, and Bolaño was intensely interested in those rules through the lens of literature, history, and violence. Ang’s much less sprawling in her first person scalpels and a different Taiwanese landscape of marriage ceremonies and the bildungsroman of the modern woman, but there’s a reason why the last short story of this collection specifically references Latin American literature. It was a piece of meta that, while pretty obvious to someone like me who’s been chasing after the intersection of writing and sociopolitical living for some time now, shows Ang knows what’s she doing with her brutality and her rape fantasies and her descriptions of cannibalism, and I do so love writers who know what they’re doing.
  
  Another benefit of an excavation type sort of writing, where modern tropes are pulled up with all their wriggling and writhing roots and run through every experiment known to woman and then some, is Ang’s my first experience of Taiwanese literature. It’s not an absolute necessity that introductory works to the lit of other countries be so heavily entrenched in the self-reflexive workings on the facts of fictions and the fictions of facts in their own particular side of the world, but it does help me relax and enjoy the show far more than I would with another country’s murder mysteries or sci-fi. The effort’s usually an intense one, but when I’ve turned the last page and started mulling over my trove of thoughts, it’s much easier to fit in the work with the rest of what I know of international history and global politics. I’m still tearing down the false walls and filling in the gaping holes that my public education shaped my youngster awareness into, so my definition of “relaxing” reading will continue to veer more towards reparation than surface tension while I still have the energy for it. Not fun, never pretty, I’m still stepping on toes and don’t think I’ll ever stop but don’t take your youth for granted, right?
  
  Ang can write pretty lit if she wants to, but only if she first makes the reader aware of all the blood-drowned catacombs underlying the structures of their sensibilities and the assumptions of their sexualities. Bit of a turn off for most, but this particular member of her audience enjoyed it.
• 
  saïd

  Translation by Howard Goldblatt.
  
  《殺夫》發表之時，引起正反兩方的極度爭議，作者因此廣受矚目。以台灣農村生活為背景，探討人性的不可捉摸，尤著眼於人與獸之間剃刀邊緣的掙扎，寫作手法細膩而深刻，無論人物造型或情節結構，均有其獨到處。作者李昂，台灣當代著名小說家，17歲發表處女作，從此其作品多以兩性關係為題材，深入探討婦女命運、人性的解放及其與社會文化道德的關係等問題。
• 
  Carmen

  Magnificient collection of 6 short stories including the one that gives tittle to the book.
  The six stories conform an album of instant photos in different periods of the life in Taiwan along the XX century that can be resumed in this paragraph from the last of the stories "A love letter never sent":
  
  

  Taiwan is a changing society, one that is making the transition from agriculture to industry; during this period, pronounced changes in society's values are evolving, particularly where relations between the sexes are concerned. The dual moral standards of men and women have become a matter of serious debate.
• 
  Faith Justice

  Five stars for the lead novella "The Butcher's Wife" which is a chilling tale of abuse and revenge set in the rapidly changing milieu of Taiwan in the early 20th century. Li Ang's tale, as translated by Howard Goldblatt, is filled with beautiful and evocative language describing the everyday life and trials of the laboring class in a seaside town. The story centers around Lin Shi, a half-starved orphan who is given in marriage to a brutal butcher who gets his sexual thrills by having his wife scream like a dying pig while raping her. In return for putting up with his sexual perversions, Lin Shi gets lots of food, a roof over her head and the dubious friendship of the women in the neighborhood, including a meddling neighbor named Auntie Ah-wang who judges Lin Shi's situation, "All a woman has to do is put up with it a while and it'll pass."
  
  This is a deep and disturbing tale of the role of women in traditional societies and their limited options. Li Ang is such a skilled writer that through her storytelling I was sympathetic to all the characters including the brutal husband and the meddling neighbor. They all have their backstories and, in their own way are constrained by the same societal forces that trap Lin Shi.
  
  I enjoyed the additional five stories less that "The Butcher's Wife," (thus the loss of a star for the overall collection) but all evoked a vivid setting and deep feelings of dread, love, confusion, or mystery. Li Ang is a formidable writer. Highly recommended, especially for folks who like to get out their comfort zones occasionally.
• 
  Lucy

  Ang's prose, translated by Howard Goldblatt is rich and satisfying, at least in the first four stories. Those stories are amazing, especially The Butcher's Wife, where real humanity is given to all the characters. I admit I was fearful when I opened the book, fearful that we would be presented with another soulless abusive husband, but I was surprised and gladly so. This story is worth buying the whole book for.
  
  Chen Lin Shi and Chen Jiangshui are horribly mismatched. He is a forty year old pig butcher and she is a very young woman. He is coarse, crude and violent and she is in desperate need of gentleness. This is a tragedy where the worst sort of person has the last word and the main participants are destroyed.
  
  The next three stories that follow are very good, especially Curvaceous Dolls with its message of repressed lesbian longing. The story positively aches.
  
  The last two stories are fairly poor and overly sentimental. They drag the otherwise excellent book down. It would have been better had the book been shorter than to have these two gaudy pieces added to the mix.
• 
  Dayva

  I read this book a couple of decades ago. Looking back on my life since then I realize that even in this country (USA) women tend to invent themselves to please the masses. Sad, but true.