The kiss of death
I once threw Tony Parker’s Lighthouse across the fo’c’sle of a ship at sea when I read that his characters were composites. Oral history should be historical, or it goes into the ocean. So it is a shame that I sometimes question Xinran’s authenticity in this account of the loves and lives of four generations of Chinese women. I question conversations recalled verbatim when they clearly weren’t recorded; and perfectly rendered speech when only notes were taken. Is this too severe? Then it is appropriate, because severity is something you must get used to, though this is a book about the Chinese concept of ‘talk love’, defined as ‘the process