Excellent memoir. It is an eye opening experience to read about growing up female in communist China. Xiaolu was given away as a small child, only to be returned to her grandparents when her adoptive family couldn't afford to feed her. She spends her childhood growing up in a small fishing village with her abusive grandfather and sweet grandmother. She is later reunited with her parents. Her mother dislikes her and makes it clear she's not welcome in the family. Because she is female in the family, food is first provided for the men, her father and brother leaving little for her. As a result, she is always hungry and searching for food and any form of nourishment she can get until she resorts to drinking pigs blood to gain strength.

The memoir continues on through her adult years. She experiences sexual abuses, love type relationships, exceptional awards and scholarships where she is accepted into film school and finally where she has a child of her own and leaves China.

The reason I rated this book 4 stars rather than 5 is for two reasons. 1...because of the lengthy drawing out of the names of the film directors and very old movies she studied in school. They were irrelevant to the story, the average person who is not an art or film major has no clue who they are, and she goes on and on about them and references them in several places. The other thing that didn't seem to fit were the small two page insets throughout the story about the mythical monkey. I read and reread these entries and just couldn't get the point of putting them in the book. If someone got that, please enlighten me.

Great read. Highly recommend.

I enjoyed this book and it gave a great insight to Chinese history and society. It took me longer to read due to needing to be fully focused but a really reflective and honest account with lots of detail and descriptions

I have loved and found Xiaolu Guo’s fiction so fresh and original since ‘A Concise Chinese – English Dictionary for Lovers’. I was thrilled when I discovered that she had written a memoir and ‘Nine Continents’ didn’t disappoint. At all. Far from it, I found this book absorbing, inspiring and beautifully rendered.

This memoir is the story of an artist; it’s also an essay on ambition, determination and the transformative aspect of creativity. Near the beginning of the book Guo relates an encounter with a group of art students on the beach of her home town when she is just a child. This has such an enormous impact on her that her ambition and vision has hinged itself upon it. She writes of one of the students paintings: “I was suddenly captivated by the girl’s imaginative act: that one could reshape a drab and colourless reality into a luminous world.”

This is also a story about China (1970s – 2000) and it has been totally engrossing to read and learn about the way she lived in Communist China, although this is not a political memoir, just brutally honest and gritty (she mentions the extreme censorship rules that dampens and oppresses artists in China and hence her need to leave). Guo depicts her life in such perfect detail at every stage of the way, the storyline reads so smoothly and the pieces fit together so snugly it felt like I was reading fiction. She maintains throughout an extremely matter-of-fact tone about her experiences (including the more brutal ones, such as her abandonment as a baby, her grandfather’s suicide, sexual abuse, her room mate’s attempted suicide, her violent lover). She doesn’t mope, whine, accuse or blame; this is not the tone or aim of the book although she does question her ability to recognise and feel love. She also captures the multi-layered nature of immigration – the need to leave, the desire to get on, to embody more cultures (international artistic visions) but the places we go to will never be able to erase those vivid images and experiences that shaped us elsewhere.

In writing this memoir and in all her creative endeavours, it seems to me, that Guo toys with silence/being silenced to find the most appropriate and accurate language, that in turn, infuses reality with colour and profound significance.

I am really interested in Chinese culture and I loved reading this book. It is great insight into how people live and survive. I loved this book. Unfortunately I am unable to post on twitter yet or Amazon but I will as soon as I can.

The shocking revelations of a young Chinese woman who grew up in poverty stricken China. From a young age, Xialou, rebelled against the plight of Chinese women, and the old fashioned ways of the proletariat. An artist, poet, filmmaker, and writer, the author eventually found her way out of China and embarked on the life she wanted for herself.

I highly recommend this book for readers who are interested in China's history and growth. Thank you Netgalley.