Customer Reviews
Not Enough "there" there - By: G. Legon, 26 Dec 2007 
Without retelling the story as other reviewers have already done, I would rather alert other potential readers to the success/failure of the book.
There are a few effective pieces within the story but there are too many rambling travelogue pieces that really didn't engage me. The book fails as a novel & fails as a memoir, hence the 2 stars. The Wild Swans, which my wife made me read, was far superior. This seems flatin comparison.
China through Chinese eyes - By: Trevor Coote, 14 Sep 2007 
While writing his dream-like novel, a gust of wind blew away the pages of the manuscript & Gao Xingjiang was forced to retrieve the sheets & put them togetherin random order with some missing altogether. At least, that is what it seems like. There is no coherent structurein Soul Mountain & no pointin looking for one. It consists of a series of musings, reflections & anecdotes as the author wanders around the bleak hinterland of modern China, a country materially impoverished but historically rich. The novel is laced with the curious myths & legends of the past which even the insanity of the Mao years failed to extinguish, & it is through these tales that we get an insight, however blurred, into the soul of the Chinese nation. Although rambling & sometimes difficult this is no experimental novel. It is simply another way of looking at the world, through the eyes of a culture whose origins were not shaped by Greco-Roman classicism or Judaeo-Christian monotheism.
Plus another 5 for the translator - By: S. Cunningham, 18 Jul 2007 
Translating a novel from one language to another is always fraught with difficulties, & I feel thatin some waysin the case of Soul Mountain the translator came to a much better understanding of the novel than the author. The prose, structure & meandering quality of this book are what make it such a wonderful experience to read. It is a book I often go back to because I can pick it up & open it anywhere & find stimulating, often amusing always exceptional writing that does not for its effect rely heavily on what went before. My first reading, of course, was chronological, although, as the book itself often is not, this is moot. Nonetheless reading it was a joyful experience, & one that I repeat often. Not many books get to stay on my book shelf, this is one of them, it bears repeated reading, & with repeated reading you will find yourself spirited into a world of your own making with Gao Xingjian as your eccentric guide.
Pfffft! - By: Linda Oskam, 08 Jan 2007 Soul Mountain describes the search of an individual for his being at several levels. After the author more or less gets his life back when the diagnosis of lung cancer is found to be wrong, he tries to find life. The I-figure is travelling along the Yangtze riverin search of glimpses of the past: primeval forests that have not yet been destroyed, people who still know the old folk songs, Daoist temples that are still functioning. But everywhere he encounters the ravages of modern day China: the Three Gorges Dam, people poaching pandas, bare & eroded mountains. There is also a "you" figure, another aspect of the I-figure, that isin search of the more spiritual & social/erotic aspects of life by his quest to find Soul mountain. During this quest he is accompanied (or should I say hampered) by the "she" figure, which is supposed to be the more feminine side of the character.
This book is a strange mixture of a travel diary, folk stories & philosophical explorations. The constant switching between the characters & the different aspects of the book made it difficult to get into the story. I liked the search for the old China, could hardly follow some of the philosophical insights into human relationships (is this maybe due to the huge cultural gap between the Chinese & European cultures?) & I (as a woman) absolutely hated the female part of the character. She is everything a woman is supposed to bein the eyes of certain extremely old-fashioned men: dependent, weak, whining, walking a mountain on high heels. Hello: this is the 21st century! Nowadays, there are plenty of strong, independent & interesting women around. I cannot imagine how this book won the author the Nobel Prize.
A Lucid Journey Through Maoist China - By: R. S. Brown, 25 May 2004 I'm scarcely inclined to give 5 stars (I don't like to use full marksin vain), but this book is one of those rare pieces of art that is as much an experience as a novel. The first word that springs to mind when reviewing this book, & probably the best way to describe it, is "lucid". There is a tranquility to the writing that I found so accomodating, & being a relatively slow reader I find that 400 pages plus can often drag, but it honestly never did with 'Soul Mountain'.
To talk content, this is one man's journey around Chinain exile, having been forced to rome the expansive lands of his home nation to avoid arrest from the communist police that take a distaste to "Spiritual Pollution", or free expression & creativity that is deemedin opposition to the Maoist regime. To call it a "travelogue", however, would be misleading - to use a cliche, it is as much a journey into the author's soul & psyche as a more literal journey. The pronouns usedin reference to the author change, usually, with each chapter - usually alternating between "I" & "You" for the first half of the novel, & then later also breaking into "He" (he apparently does this to distance himself from certain aspects of his personality, as if both he & the reader are looking down on himself from above - & also because he is lonely). I personally enjoyed the "you" sections the most, as they are the more personal accounts of a relationship between the author & an unnamed woman (referred to as "she").
Ignore reviews that talk about it being too experimental - if no-one experiments, how can literature move forward? Also ignore comments that it is too hard to read - there is no real cohesion, & this may be confusing, but never hard - I never experienced the apathy I have with books that I consider hard going, such as Heller's "Catch 22". Read this book for the comforting, zen-like narrative that you will experience if you truly let yourself go with this book. Don't try to analyse or scrutinise it (the author often does that himself, anyway), & just enjoy this book for what it is: an autobiographical masterpiece from a truly deserving Nobel Prize winner.
