This was an extremely interesting and unique read. It was a romance, but definitely a unique and unconventional one. I thought it was very strong and a great novel. Made up of little stories about the couple where the woman addresses her lover as 'you', it was an interesting structure and narrative.

Narrating the story of a Chinese woman studying for her dissertation in London, "A Lover's Discourse" unabashedly explores the struggles and discoveries of being a foreigner in politically tumultuous post-Brexit Europe. After her parents pass away, our unnamed protagonist leaves her old life behind, and does not have high hopes of a life beyond academics. However, after meeting an Australian - British - German architect, who convinces her to live on a boat moored in London, she slowly begins to dare hope for companionship...and perhaps even roots, in this foreign country.

Haunting but lyrically, Xialu Guo presents a relationship in fragments. Through conversations between our unnamed titular characters, Guo questions societal and cultural imperatives. Can home be somewhere other than your birthplace? Can you have more than one home? Are certain cultural norms superior to others? What does mean to be a couple? Is motherhood the only path to female fulfillment?

This book is very much an experiential read - one that is meant to explore emotions rather than provide meaning through a plot. The characters are never named, and their experiences can be transplanted to most multi-racial relationships. The protagonist's journey of rootlessness is one shared by many third-culture individuals. And her struggles with motherhood are extremely relatable, from the shifting relationship dynamics with her husband, to the existential crises she experiences as her life no longer is her own. Three stars because although I admire the writing style, I would have liked to see more...action?


Recommended for enthusiasts of heritage fiction and #ownvoices narratives.

Thank you Grove Atlantic and Net Galley for this #gifted ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Full of allusions to Roland Barthes' works, the book profoundly examines love and language. I found this novel pretty atmospheric, perfectly capturing the anxieties many of us must get through. Told in vignettes, the narrative centers around a Chinese woman, a Ph.D. student who comes to London, and an Australian landscape architect whom the woman fall in love with. It’s important to emphasize this book is a lot more than a romance filled with well-worn tropes. A Lover’s Discourse challenges the philosophy of dialogue, showing how dialogue can affect the understanding of reality, is filled with witty observations and grapples with big questions.

If you want to dive into a lyrical, atmospheric and highly original read, look no further.

I struggled to connect with the protagonists, with the dialogues, with what makes Guo's writing such a standout. I absolutely adore Guo's works. I have read half a dozen of their works in the past and loved each and every one of them.
A lover's discourse is a clash of melodies that in the end don't sound harmonious. It made me nostalgic about - Lovers in the age of Indifference, Guo's earlier work that runs in similar vein but is gentle in its execution.

This novel really got me engaged and invested. It makes me suffocated with how relatable it is.

A good book illustrating diaspora I would recommend to my friends.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!

Now available.

Experimental, fragmented and provocative, Xiaalu Guo's "A Lover's Discourse" is wholly unique. From my reading, I understood it to be a conversational piece between lovers who cross nations, ethnicities, cultures and time to be together. Set against the modern day Brexit, the tense narration also looks at the impact of rising xenophobia and personal relations. As an immigrant who has been in love in a country that is not my own, I deeply related to the protagonist's conflicting struggles in love and duty to self. Unsettling yet thoughtful, this is a very interesting new novel.

A Lover's Discourse is the story of a young Chinese immigrant after she moves to London mid-Brexit to pursue her PhD. After moving to England she finds herself lonely and isolated after the recent deaths of her parents, a lack of friendship in her new country, and a wide cultural gap with the English locals. However, most of the story is made up of her reflections on a whirlwind romantic relationship she begins with a German-Australian transplant shortly after her move, but all told after the fact, once the winds have died down and the rose-colored glasses have come off.

All the parts about her lover are written in second person, addressing him directly, and the effect is lovely, like a love note—sweet-leaning-melancholy and very intimate. It's quiet and introspective. It reads like wiping the fog from a window and peering through it into their life. It's not at all performative as books about romantic relationships, especially early relationships, can so often be. The author struck just the right tone, my best attempt at describing it would be to call it nostalgic, an impressive feeling to inspire in a reader, especially given that the narrator's experiences are not at all like my own. The writing itself is sparse and beautiful which made it all the more enjoyable. It's definitely worth savoring, like a haiku, still musical for all its lack of flourishes.

Written thoughts, ideas, and letters. A slideshow, with a short look at each one, and Xiaolu Gui is changing the slides in the projector, while we sit amazed in the dark.

I really enjoyed this story. I liked the characters throughout; it was a sweet story to follow along.

I really like Xiaolu Guo, she's articulate, poetic and has a unique perspective on the Chinese immigrant experience in the UK. I've heard her speak at the London Book Fair and read and enjoyed 'A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers'. I was looking forward to 'A Lover's Discourse.' Being told in fragments of dialogue took me by surprise but isn't in itself off-putting – I recently read and was impressed by Miranda Popkey's 'Topics of Conversation.' The major problem I had was that the ARC formatting was all over the place, and rendered the book unreadable. Letters randomly missing - e.g. Chinese was 'hinese', the Mona Lisa was 'ona Lisa' - one sentence, under 'An Ordinary tradesman's Job', read 'aybe it's ordinary. But I nd it interesting.' At 39%, I couldn't get through the novel with such erratic formatting and missing letters. If you're able to fix this so it renders correctly, I would be happy to start again with the novel.

I'm at a loss to describe this novel which is told through a series of fragmentary thoughts that float off the page, It's the tale of a unnamed Chinese woman who arrives in London in 2015; she's writing a Phd dissertation on Chinese art which mimics Western classics. The man who will become her husband is an Australian-German landscape architect. They are very different in tone and approach to life but they are linked through their outsider status. What is home? Is it the houseboat, an apartment, the UK, China, or each other? Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

I listened to A Lovers’s Discourse on audiobook and really enjoyed the narrator. The book is made up of many different scenes that come together to tell the story of the couple. I found it interesting, but I just wanted more from the book. It’s a quick listen and definitely enjoyable, but I just didn’t find myself invested in the story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to listen to this audiobook.

Just as an artist paints to interpret his/her view of the world, Guo has written "A Lover's Discourse" to interpret her view of a relationship. This is a much more difficult thing to do when writing for the masses. Of course, this book appears to be a personal piece of writing thus, wanting for the general reader. Knowing the basic premise of the book, I could clumsily make my way through the gaps, punctuation, and silence. But boy, it could have made for a good story and possibly, an enjoyable read if written in the good old-fashioned way.
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An inventive, risk-taking writer. She lives and breathes in the space between lovers, languages and culture. And in between the vagaries of love. While not quite as captivating as her memoir, Nine Continents, this book is evocative and thoughtful.

Snippets of conversation between two cross-cultural lovers tell their story of intimacy. Thoughts on the meaning of art, love, language, comfort and home. The conversations read nearly like poems--short, poignant, some of which I really enjoyed.

- When did you start to realize what is yours and what is not yours? Do you remember?
- I don't know. I thought everything was mine until I hit thirty.

The whole piece is less than a half hour read. I wish I could give it more, but the thoughts and formatting were too fragmented to follow easily. While I appreciate that often a native language can convey an emotion more genuinely, I struggled with the German/Mandarin overlays.

"A Lover's Discourse" by Xiaolu Guo is a very peculiar little book. It is written in short, letter- like chapters, addressed by the narrator to her lover. The narrator, a young Chinese woman, moves to London to obtain her PhD during the time of the Brexit campaign. There she meets an Australian-German man, whom she fall in love with and starts a relationship. The book follows their relationship from before they start dating until many years into their marriage. It is full of musings on cultural and linguistic differences, differences between women's and men's outlook on life, and the general feeling of uprootedness one experiences when trying to build a life away from one's place of origin.

Reading this book was a very personal experience for me, as I saw myself a lot in the image of the narrator and in her thoughts and experiences. I have also moved from a different country to London to go to university. My husband is also of a different nationality than myself and many times has a different outlook on life due to his different culture and upbringing. These aspects of my personal life made this book truly speak to me. It had me laugh out loud and chuckle at times, and feel irritated at others. I really loved this little book and look forward to purchasing my own copy once it is published. I highly recommend this one for readers with an interest in reading about the relationship between people, and the quest of finding oneself and finding a place to belong.

Thank you to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

What delighted me: the way, on the page, I could see the ways that words couldn't bridge the gap between to people struggling to love one another, from different languages and cultural backgrounds.

I was left a little wanting-more, though. I felt as if the author was afraid to reach for true feeling, because it would be in conflict with her wish to explore not-understandings between people, rather than true connections. I felt frustrated by the feeling that some of the meanings were left deliberately obscure, intentionally vague. I wondered if more familiarity with Roland Barthes would have made the read more significant to me.

"There is no place like home"."Home is where the heart is". A warm cozy feeling...but what if you are rootless, an immigrant to a new country, unfamiliar with the language, culture and ideology?

He picked elderflowers by the park. "Wasn't it clear the moment you picked the elderflowers...and we looked at each other...[doesn't] love always start from first sight?...It's only when we have a second thought about our first sighted love, that we might change our mind". He was a landscape architect of British-German descent having moved from Australia. She was a Chinese doctoral candidate from Beijing studying visual anthropology.

In vignettes, snippets of conversation, two unnamed rootless immigrants discuss their views on subjects such as the Brexit referendum, immigration, art, love , language and the comfort of home. She, enjoys the vibrant city life, he, life aboard a houseboat. The reader is privy to their exchanges demonstrating different ideologies and cultures.

"Why do you think home is lifeless?"
"I don't think home is lifeless. this boat's our home. But I think an enclosed space with a conventional setup is lifeless"

"Aren't you worried about having to change mooring at the time?"
"No really you are my mooring".

"We could play in a band together. I feel there are musical vibrations between us".
"Vibrations?'
"Love".

He feels power is beautiful, certainly, this is a bone of contention.
"Obviously power is beautiful. Women in particular know that...".
"It's men's illusion to think power is beautiful".

"A Lover's Discourse" by Xiaolu Guo is written in English with an overlay of German and Mandarin expressions used when the lovers find their native language can more accurately express a viewpoint. The lovers often must agree to disagree as they navigate their ever changing life journey!

Thank you Grove Atlantic and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Xiaolu Guo's books are always full of witty observations and smart wordplay, and her latest is no different. These snippets of conversation show the evolution of a relationship between two very different people. This reminded me of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, but more developed and polished. For me, there seems to be a larger focus on home or the search for it in this. The main character switches her home constantly throughout the novel living in a variety of dwellings and countries. Her style is still poetic and exudes a sense of calm on the reader, but it felt a little disjointed because the snippet format. It covers a range of topics in the snippets, but it didn't flow as well as I would have hoped. However, if you have liked her previous works, you'll probably enjoy this one as well.

This novel divided by conversations allows the reader a peak into the life of its main character and her struggle being in two different worlds and often feeling like the other.