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the complete review - fiction

Wild Kids

by
Chang Ta-chun

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : interesting view of modern Taiwan in two short novels.

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "These slim narratives, gracefully translated by Michael Berry, are related less by a unified authorial persona than by their similar settings in 1980's Taiwan, their knowing, offhanded dissection of family malaise and their notable fascination with storytelling (.....) Whether these stories merely chronicle or more profoundly illuminate a slice of Taiwanese culture and fantasy is hard to say." - Maureen McLane, The New York Times Book Review

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       This volume presents two of Taiwanese author Chang Ta-chun's novels, My Kid Sister (1993) (see our review) and Wild Child (1996) (see our review). These are the second and third volumes of what translator Michael Berry calls "Chang's Big Head Spring trilogy", published under the pseudonym of Big Head Spring (Datou Chun). (The first volume -- "The Weekly Journal of Young Big Head Spring" (Shaonian Datou Chun de shenguo zhouji, 1992) -- apparently does not lend itself as readily to translation.)
       Berry's brief introduction offers some information about the young and prolific author Chang, assuring readers that "Chang Ta-chun is not just a writer; in his native Taiwan he is a cultural phenomenon."
       The two novellas complement one another quite well. Fast-paced and striking, they give a good impression of youth in modern Taiwan. There are also numerous illustrations to liven up the text.

       See also our reviews of each of the novellas

• My Kid Sister
• Wild Child

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Links:

• Columbia University Press publicity page

• Emdashes
• Publishers Weekly
• Tirelessreader

• See Index of Chinese literature

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About the Author:

       Taiwanese author Chang Ta-chun was born in 1957.

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