China The novel

For his newest epic about an intriguing world locale, Rutherfurd (Paris, 2013) dives into seven decades of Chinese history, beginning in 1839, as circumstances lead to the First Opium War, the Boxer Rebellion, and more. The novel has a tighter scope, time-wise, than his usual big-canvas approach, which allows for in-depth exploration of an overarching theme, China's subjugation by Western powers, particularly Britain. Taking the long view, Rutherfurd adeptly dramatizes the impact of and fallout from major events, including the Taiping Rebellion and the destruction of Beijing's Summer Palace. His characters, among them British merchants, missionaries, Chinese government officials, peasants, pirates, and an artisan who rises high in service at the imperial palace through unusual means, assert their individuality while embodying beliefs on different sides of China's internal and external conflicts. The protagonists are predominantly men, but many fascinating women also feature in the story. Though the first third feels overly drawn-out, the novel takes an entertaining, educational journey through China's rich and complex history, geography, art, and diverse cultures during a tumultuous epoch.

Rutherfurd's immersive if uneven epic (after Paris: The Novel) focuses on the development of China's relationship with the West. He begins in 1839, on the eve of what became known as the Opium War. British traders have been profiting from selling the drug to the Chinese, and Lord Lin, a righteous government minister, vows to stamp out the lucrative trade, by force if necessary, a tack that prompts the British to showcase their naval superiority. Rutherfurd carries the story forward through the early 20th century, ending it after the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, and the untimely death of a Chinese emperor. The conflicts are illuminated via a large cast, including Lin's young assistant, Jiang Shi-Rong; Nio, a pirate who shifts his alliances out of expediency; the unimaginatively named Englishman John Trader, whose fortune hinges on the uninterrupted flow of opium from India into China; and Lacquer Nail, a father and husband who becomes a palace eunuch to support his family, a trade Rutherfurd illuminates with somewhat expositional dialogue. The earlier sections are more engaging than the exhausting second half, and the balance between Asian and Occidental characters may disappoint some who'd hoped, from the title, that the focus would be on the Chinese. Nonetheless, readers unfamiliar with the history will learn something from this action-packed saga. (May)

An overstuffed coffer of silver yuan, renegade generals, general yearning, jeweled nail guards, and pilfered testicles. China: The Novel may have all the marketing ring of Hot Dog...The Movie, but Rutherfurd's formula over half a dozen period soaps remains constant: Take a historical period, populate it with dashing and dastardly characters, and go to town. Here it plays out in a tale full of Orientalizing clichés that would drive Edward Said to despair, from the obligatory "Confucius says" to yowling rebels dispatched by heroic Britons, with one such ingrate coming a cropper thanks to an expertly hurled cricket ball. "Shall I kill him, Grandfather?" asks the young lad who lobbed the googly. "I can chop his head." Grandfather is a fellow named John Trader, who appears early in this century-spanning story as an ambitious lad who lives up to his last name shifting opium and tea. The stern Scottish general who inspects him in India, whose "eyebrows turned up at the ends so that he looked like a noble hawk"--think C. Aubrey Smith's character in the 1939 film The Four Feathers, parts of which seem to have drifted into Rutherfurd's imaginarium--eventually allows Trader into his demesne, but only after Trader loses an eye and thereafter projects a Lord Nelson--ish aspect. His remaining eye is firmly fixed on his beloved Agnes, who says pithy things like, "Have you had a good lunch?" Meanwhile, big doings are afoot: The European powers are carving out territories, contending warlords are mussing up the Confucian order, and, as the narrator of this part of the multipart saga tells us, "the clouds were darkening." That narrator, the most interesting character in a book full of stick figures, is a eunuch who is not quite omniscient and certainly unreliable and who spends psychic energy engineering the disappearance of an enemy's detached genitalia while faithfully serving an empress who's not above voicing an authorial groaner: Asked about the practice of foot binding, she replies, "I'm going to take steps to end it." Ouch. A by-the-numbers romp in the exotic. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.