DNF 24%

I hate admitted that a book and I are poorly suited but I cannot bring myself to finish WUHAN.

Fletcher is a debut author and I feel his passion for the material and created ambition got away from him. I can see a lot of research went into the text but it is layered so thick that the pacing suffers. The characters are underdeveloped and their actions are overwritten. Chapter fourteen unnecessarily breaks the chronology of the timeline and there are far too many characters with too little going on. The stylistic shifting between first and third person is distracting and I'd no patience for the unrealated parsthetized additions sprinkled throughout the text.

Not for me and not a book I can see myself recommending forward.

Please note that as I did not finish this book, I will not be posting a public review on Amazon, Goodreads, or my blog.

Never had a chance to read as the license expired before I could read it. ………………………………——————————————///////———//////////////////////———————————————————————————///////////////—————////////////—————-///:://///////—————————————————————//////////////////////—————————————————-////////////////—————————————————————

This long sprawling historical novel is a panoramic portrait of China during the tumultuous years 1937-1939 when Japan invaded causing untold misery to countless thousands of ordinary Chinese citizens who suffered at the hands of the Japanese. The first part of the book follows one such beleaguered family as they are forced to flee the approaching Japanese forces. It’s an ambitious novel, with many narrative threads, a vast cast of characters, including many real-life ones –brief biographical sketches are helpfully provided at the end – harrowing and realistic battle scenes and a satirical look at the group of foreign correspondents who reported on the war. This last part was the least convincing to me as they all seemed caricatures of white privileged foreign journalists. The novel is meticulously and thoroughly researched and is both informative and illuminating. I learnt a lot from it. But did I enjoy it? Not really. In spite of the terrible events described I remained on the outside looking in and never really engaged with any of the characters. But above all I found the extreme violence and pervasive profanity gratuitous and overdone. So much bad language is used by just about everyone (would Agnes Smedley really have used the c-word so freely?) that it became tedious and desensitising. The broad historical sweep was welcome, opening up a time and place I was unfamiliar with, but overall I found the novel too long, too overdone and just generally too much.

It was not an easy read, but very interesting and rewarding. I liked to learn about parts of history <i had no idea about and the author managed to transport facts very well. I was transported to this part part of the world, even his style was quite different and that helped. On the other hand it was difficult at the beginning to get used to his many enummerations, they could be tiring even though the effect was quite clear. After a while I could apreciate the style more, because I was used to it and the characters started to be known to me.
At the beginning I didn't really like the shocking details, it was difficult to continue reading, even though now at the end I understand that these descriptions were necessary. They let you understand the characters and the story (and history) better, but they are not really an easy read.
I would recommend this book.

This utterly transportive, historical fiction epic was amazing in its depth and sprawl. I learned so much about Chinese culture, history, World War II, and the city of Wuhan caught at a cultural crossroads where Confucianism met Social Darwinism. I am astounded that this is British author John Fletcher's first novel, it is such a deftly interwoven work of documented fact and literary fiction.

Wuhan is about patriotism, about a culture of class and hierarchy and of deference, and it is about familial love, presented by way of two very different Chinese men with very strong-minded wives, both routed from their homes by murderous Japanese troops, and both headed to Wuhan. Fictional farmer Wei's family consists of him and his hugely pregnant wife, their six children aged 2-16, and his aged father, fleeing their ancestral farm in Shaanxi with assorted animals by wagon. Non-fictional character Lao She is a progressive socialist writer forced to leave his university position, his wife, children and aged mother behind in Jinan, for an opportunity he literally couldn't refuse, a propaganda position offered by General Feng Yuxiang.

After reaching Wuhan, farmer Wei sells what he believes to be his only surviving family member, to an American nurse, and enlists in the 22nd Battalion to sacrifice his life against the Japanese. And Lao She has all kinds of adventures with a Chinese resistance league made up of writers and artists. There are riveting accounts of actual battles, and fascinating bits about historical figures like Generals Chiang Kai-shek, Feng Yuxiang, and Rensuke Isogai, an enterprising young doctor named Donald Hankey, and various western journalists and spies. My favorite major character was Wei's eldest daughter, Spider Girl, so known for her peculiar lurching gait, due to rickets.

Author Fletcher writes so beautifully about Wuhan's fruits, flowers, industry and the Bund, the fact that he wasn't Chinese actually came as a shock to me. I love that he includes a History of the Non-Fictional Characters After 1938 section at the end of his book, I was sad my favorite minor character Intelligent Whore was not included.

My thanks to Head of Zeus and NetGalley for a review copy of this book.

Wuhan is a novel of epic proportions set in the first year (1937‒1938) of the second Sino-Japanese war or Japanese invasion of China, when Wuhan (yes, the very same) served as the capital of the government headed by Chiang Kai-shek, a period fraught with horrifying violence, suffering and loss of life. This was not a novel that captured me from the start, but one that did gradually pull me in, and which I ended up enjoying very much (and indeed learning much from as well).

In the book we follow numerous storylines, of both historical and fictional characters. In the first part of the book, we basically follow two journeys. The first is of the fictional farmer Wei and his family (his old father, rather unpleasant wife, and six children) who were in some ways reminiscent of Wang Lung and his family from Pearl S Buck’s The Good Earth. We have the good-hearted and just Wei who loves his children and against social mores looks out for his oldest daughter, Spider Girl who suffers from rickets as a result of being denied food by her mother (naturally, her son was to be given preference; despite trying not to look at her from a current-day perspective, I found her to be a rather selfish character) and constantly faces insults and ill-will from her. Wei is disturbed by the clouds of black smoke he sees at a distance, but it is Spider Girl who brings news of the impending Japanese arrival to their village and persuades her father to move with the entire family towards Wuhan. The family sets off on a harrowing journey where many unspeakable sacrifices have to be made, and indignities to be borne.

The second story is that of author Lao She who is torn between his Western beliefs and the Confucian ideals he still finds himself practicing when he is called to Wuhan to serve his country while in his hometown, his old mother lies ill and can’t be moved. His equally patriotic wife convinces him to make the sacrifice, go to Wuhan while she and the children will remain and cope as best as they can. Lao She may not face the same difficulties that Wei and his family do on their journey, but he too must face indignities, and difficulties on his way, and also witnesses the atrocities that not only the invaders but their own soldiers are unleashing on innocent civilians, while the higher ups (many of them) focus on saving their own lives and wealth.

In Wuhan, Lao She begins his rather difficult task of training writers to produce propaganda that would actually be understood by people, since most of them can’t seem to understand that their high-flown Marxist writings mean little to the common person. He is also constantly worried about how his family are doing since he hears nothing from them. Some way down the line he is also entrusted with a rather distasteful mission by the government, but this doesn’t keep him entirely safe from the secret police who target him as well. Alongside, at the bidding of Madame Chiang, wife of Chiang Kai-Shek, he is also asked to write a play celebrating the city and the people.

Wei on the other hand enlists in the army and through him we witness the brutalities and realities of war in which it is the common person who suffers while those that initiate the conflict are at a safe distance. Wei does make a few friends, and acquire skills.

Spider Girl meanwhile finds herself housekeeper to journalist and writer Agnes Smedley (a historical character), who contributes toward the treatment of wounded soldiers. Through Agnes we also get a look into the views and perspectives of expat journalists in the Last Ditch Press Club including the idealistic pacifist George Hogg who tries to help a group of orphans, and Peter Fleming (brother of Ian, and partly an inspiration behind James Bond), who also works for MI 6. There are also a few others whose stories we follow, and a brief appearance by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood.

Through Agnes and Spider girl we also meet Hu Lan-Shih (based on a real-life character but in a slightly fictional avatar), a former factory worker and unionist who is volunteering towards first-aid to wounded soldiers, an effort in which there is participation from many surprising quarters. Her story comes to Madame Chiang’s ears and she is offered a place on a government committee, but Hu is soon disillusioned and moves on to other tasks including helping young doctor Donald Hankey whom Spider Girl also helps.

The story is told in two voices. One the narrator, the author himself who tells us the stories of most of these characters even speaking to us (the readers) on some occasions. The other is the voice of Lao She, the only character who speaks to us in first person. At first, I found myself wondering why he (being a real-life character) was given a voice, and I found some of his language to be coarse as well. But that soon changed and by the end I found myself really enjoying his part of the narrative—it left me feeling as though Lao She was really talking to us. (It also left me wanting to explore his writings, which I have popped on to my list).

The book in effect really gives us a picture of China in those days—the mid-1930s, a time when Chiang Kai-Shek was in power. Illiteracy was the norm, and people had no conception of China, rather only of their own villages and towns. Language too, was a problem, for there were so many dialects spoken, that people found themselves unable to understand each other. When the Japanese attacked, people did however begin to get together and even the common man wished to fight for their homeland. (The efforts at unification had me thinking back to school history lessons of the unification of Germany, and Italy and what followed). But in the corridors of power, things were different as Chiang Kai-Shek, to preserve his own power, did not keep around him any truly skilled generals, which meant defence efforts were inadequate, and only a few could do something effective. On the other hand, the Soong sisters, who included Madame Chiang, and her sisters, Soong Ai-ling, married to the richest man in China, H.H. Kung, also the finance minister, and Soong Ching-ling, wife of Sun Yat-sen, who each wielded power and influence in their own right, worked for the betterment of the people and the country.

Besides the political situation in China, the book also gives us an idea of broader world politics, the appeasement policies of Britain and France who seemed more concerned with destroying communism rather than helping those who were suffering (on the continent and elsewhere). Though one does understand to a point their reluctance to being involved in another war.

Faith is another thread that one sees in the book, with many characters drawing strength from their faith.

War itself, as does any war, shows one the ugliest side of humanity, and this was the case here too; brutalities, looting, assaults, death—also greed—all of it is seen, and one does begin to understand the point of view of the pacifists during that time (at any time, too, really, but more so then, just some decades after the Great War though their view of how far Hitler would go was sadly wrong).

And because this book is focused on a period of war, there is violence, a lot of it—blood, gore—in all its rawness. But during the earlier parts of the book, I do agree with some other reviewers that the descriptions of violence and of assaults on women were a touch too graphic. Also, some of the coarse language feels entirely unnecessary. I could well see how these would be off-putting; it was to me as well, and while it didn’t lead me to want to abandon the book, I did wonder how I would get through it. But once I started to get immersed in the story, characters, and events, I did not only read it but enjoyed it as well.

So Wuhan turned out to be a book which I enjoyed (though enjoy is probably not quite the word) very much; not only did I learn a lot about a period in China I knew little about, it also gave me a lot to think about and introduced me to many real-life characters who I’ve become interested in learning more about. . (I also loved that the author managed to put in some surprises I didn’t see coming at all). Long though this is, I would definitely recommend it, though it may take a while to get into.

4.25 stars

The Japanese invasion of China, brutal and destructive, and its effects on the Chinese people forced to flee their ancestral homes in an often futile attempt to reach the huge city of Wuhan is brilliantly written by author John Fletcher. With unforgettable characters and a knowledgable setting, this is one of the best books I have read this year. Highly recommended.

I've read approx 2/3rds of this book but had to give up as it was taking too long to read. It is an interesting but violent story of the Japanese invasion of China and the atrocities the Japanese soldiers carried out.

Wuhan has a brave and ambitious premise - a stretching epic novel set in 1937 during the Japanese invasion of China, it seeks to tell the story of that invasion and war across multiple viewpoints.

Unfortunately, Wuhan does not meet it's ambitions, and I had to abandon the novel around a third of the way through.

The multiple viewpoints are intriguing, but somehow there was both a jarring change between them and too many similarities between the narration to feel like they were truly distinct.
While Fletcher is also obviously trying to relay the horrors of war, the way he goes about this felt gratuitous and unnecessary - long paragraphs are repeatedly given over to in depth descriptions of death and violence. This was one reason I abandoned the book; after the third or fourth of these descriptions, the novel felt less like someone trying to pass on a lesson to their reader and more an excuse for extended uncomfortable descriptions.

Wuhan should be credited for its ambitions, but it's not a novel I'd recommend fellow readers pick up.

thanks to netgalley and the publisher for an early review copy.

this book was heavily triggering and i found no warnings for it whatsoever. it was extremely violent for what i expected to be a historical epic, which it wasn't at all. so disappointed, would not recommend.

Getting into "Wuhan", I expected a historical epic (the book is more than 600 pages) dealing with the violence and uncertainty of the Japanese occupation of China. Instead, I was thrusted into a brutally violent and oftentimes shoddily written text. The violence (which I must say defines both the Chinese and Japanese armies) is mixed with loads of repulsive profanity - in the first fifty pages or so, many of the characters speak about having to "take a shit", while a supposedly polite author discusses his bleeding anus. After that gets worse.

While I'm all about using profanity to convey a message to the reader, I hate it when it's done simply for shock value. And here it's the latter. Most of the curses and graphic descriptions seem unnecessary for the plot, like they're there just to seem "edgy" or who knows what.

The worst part about this book isn't the writing and unnecessary violence, though. It's the title. I'm pretty sure the writer and publishers knew using the name of the this particular city will grab the readers' attention and move more copies. It's not like the city does not play a role here, just that the single word title is very vague and has the potential to lead to many confused and impulsive buys. And that's just cheap and not nice.

Things of note: This book is extremely violent and definitely has parts that should be outlined with trigger warnings as it can be difficult for some to read. The story is fascinating but the story can be a bit heavy and hard to read at times.

This was a difficult one, the premise was intriguing and I so desperately want to know what happens to the characters and how the rest of the story pans out. But the graphic description of violence was too much for me. I've read violent books before and while I appreciate that they can add to the gravity of the novel, these felt out of place and almost uncalled for. If you can look past that, there is a fascinating story that lies underneath.