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After long rummaging in a bookshop called “Borders“ in Chicago, I found this book of Adeline Yen Mah. I read the abstract and I knew I had to buy it. First of all I want to give you this little abstract:

After a while I said, “When did my mama die?“
“Your mama came down with a high fever three days after you were born. She died when you were two weeks old. ...“
Though I was only four years old, I understood I should not ask Aunt Baba too may questions about my dead mama. Big Sister once told me, “Aunt Baba and Mama used to be best friends. A long time ago, they worked together in a bank in Shanghai owned by our grandaunt, the youngest sister of Grandfather Ye Ye. But then Mama died giving birth to you. If you had not been born, Mama would still be alive. She died because of you. You are a bad luck.“

It is an autobigraphical book about the first 15 years of Adeline Yen Mah’s life in China. From the point of view of a very little child the author shows her effort to cope with the tyrannic position of her new mother. As an infant the little Chinese girl has to watch how her father remarries directly after her mother’s death and now she has to suffer the cruel treatment by her new stepmother. Consequently this stepmother lords it over the whole family and controls every of its steps. As the youngest of her five siblings Wu Mei shoulders the worst compared to them. Blamed for the loss of her real mother Mah becomes an outcast in her own family.  She is often forgotten at school, is disowned by her own family and not allowed to express her wishes. She never obtains acceptance, not even by her father, who forgets her name and the date of her birthday. Denied love from her parents, Wu Mei finds a little bit consolation in relationships with her grandfather Ye Ye and her aunt Baba, but after her stepmother’s initiative both are taken from her. At school she becomes are of her only possibility to find a way out of her extremely hard loneliness when she begins writing little stories. Being very good at school and winning an international play-writing contest in high school, at long last she is granted her wish to attend college in England by her father. In spite of her parents’ neglect, she eventually becomes a doctor and realizes her dream of being a writer.

While sensing the book the historical context is mediated to the reader: Hence Adeline Yen Mah particularly describes  the background of the period in which she lived as a child in the backmost part of her book. It is the year 1945, the Second World War has come to an end, and the Communists (consequently Mao Ze-Dong) are moving through China seizing power. These political and social events affected her life and that of her family. In 1948 the 4-year-old Wu Mei was placed in a convent boarding school in Tianjin. At that time members of the population who were able to fled from China in droves. Wu Mei finds herself as the only pupil remaining in the convent. At the last minute an aunt collects her taking her to her family in Hong Kong.

I am very impressed by the strength of Wu Mei’s character and inner power which are skilfully developed on nearly every page of the book. Cultural influences and especially the nature and structure of a Chinese family are very openly represented and demonstrated. I was extremely moved by the endurance in distinctive loneliness and contempt. This atrocious feeling and mood goes through the whole book and lets the reader fight back his tears.

Being unwanted and quasi unnoticed, Wu Mei never gives herself up. Normally it is the function of a family to offer acceptance, belonging a place and giving affirmation, help and guidance. Wu Mei never got these important things, she had to fight for them. (N.B., Nov. 2008)

For more information here.

The Time Traveller's Wife

By Audrey Niffenegger

The novel “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger was published in 2003. It is about a love story between Henry, who is a librarian in Chicago, and Clare, who is an artist. But it is not a normal affair because Henry has a genetic disease and travels trough time. In the different times he has to cope with very difficult situations and always has to find clothes first of all because he cannot take anything with him.

In the year 1977 Clare and Henry have their first meeting. But it is not a normal meeting due to their age difference. Clare is only six and Henry is 36 years old.

They meet each other on a meadow near Clare’s house where she lives with her parents. At first she does not believe Henry and is frightened when he tells her that he is a time traveller because she thinks that time travellers are just fictional. But when he lets her know that they become friends later in their lives she begins to trust him and is even more convinced that Henry said the truth when she sees him disappearing in front of her.

Time travellers often travel to the same places, so therefore Clare and Henry meet 152 times on the meadow during the year 1977 and 1991 and get to know each other. When Clare is 18, in 1989, they temporarily meet the last time.

In 1991 Clare and Henry meet the first time in reality, so that their age difference is just the real eight years. They coincidently run into each other in the library where Henry works. As a consequence of his time travelling he does not remember Clare, but she is not shocked because she knows that this would happen when they meet in the reality. On account of this they get to know each other again, but the first time in their real lives. They live together happily and make plans to get married.

Therefore Henry visits his father in 1992 to tell him about their wedding. Normally he does not see his father often because his father is very sad owing to the fact that he does not want to admit that his wife is dead. She died in a car accident one winter night when she was driving together with Henry. Henry just survived because he time travelled at the moment of the accident. But his father cannot understand why Henry did not prevent his mother from being killed. Henry, of course, is not happy about his mother's dead and has to struggle with it, too. Additionally he sometimes travels to the accident, but he is always too late to prevent the car accident from happening.

In 1993 Clare and Henry have their wedding. Henry is 30 and Clare 22 years old. They have planned everything very well and have invited a lot of friends. But just before the ceremony Henry travels and returns as an older man. This of course causes amazement because he looks much older than minutes before. Clare however is happy to get married to Henry even if she knows that it is going to be a kind of a strange life.

In 1994 they are attempting to buy a house. But because Henry has already travelled to the future, he knows how their house looks like and they therefore view a lot of houses until they find the right one.

In 1996 Clare gets pregnant. They both really wanted a baby, but Henry was not optimistic because he feared that his genetic disease was heritable and that it therefore would not work to have a baby. But Clare was obsessed with the dream of having a baby because she wanted Henry to be in this child to have someone whom she could always love and to have at least a bit of Henry at home when he is time travelling. Unfortunately Clare loses the baby in the eighth week of pregnancy probably because the baby had the same disease as Henry and “travelled out of Clare”. That’s why Henry consults a doctor then. He wants to know if there was a possibility of preventing the baby to have the same genetic disease. But the doctor has no idea how to do it.

All in all Clare had five miscarriages for which reason Henry is desperate and gets himself sterilized without speaking to Clare because he is afraid of losing Clare by having more miscarriages. Clare is very disappointed when he tells her the truth and cannot understand his decision. But in the following night Henry time travels to Clare as a younger man, so before is sterilization, and Clare gets pregnant again. To Henry’s relief Clare is still pregnant after 18 weeks.

They are just considering the name of their daughter when Henry travels to the future where he meets his daughter Alba in the Zoo. Alba is ten years old and Henry is 38 years old but in reality Henry is dead in 2011 what Alba is telling him then. He died when Alba was five years old.

Back to reality, Clare gives birth to Alba in 2001 and they live happily together until Alba’s fifth birthday because Henry already knows that he is going to die soon.

As Alba is a time traveller, too, she meets her older self on her birthday. She, as the “real Alba”, does not know yet that Henry is going to die soon, but the older Alba is telling her. She is really sad, of course. Henry asks her not to tell Clare the truth because he knew that she would be deeply sad. But Alba needs to share the knowledge with her mother. Clare is very sad but they try to enjoy their last days, weeks or months together, always with the uncertainty how long they will be together.

For New Year's Eve Henry had invited some friends on account of having seen himself dying on that day. He did not want Clare to be alone when he is dying on that day. In the evening he travels to the meadow where he used to meet Clare. There he was shot by a hunter who wanted to kill a deer but missed it and injured Henry instead. Back at home he could only be seen dying by Clare, Alba and his friends. There was nothing to do for him – it was a huge loss especially for Clare and Alba.

Life was not easy for Clare, neither with Henry nor without him.   But she does not regret her life – she would not change any minute if she had the chance to live again.

(F. S., May 2010)