Book Review: Naked Earth is beautifully and superbly written. Every page has some small brilliancy, a turn of phrase, a description realer than reality, a moment of wisdom, a piercing insight into human nature, psychology, behavior. Eileen Chang is a virtuoso and her work is a graduate seminar in writing. But there is some small something missing here, not quite there, lurking at the shadowy fringes. I know from the book's history that this was a commissioned work of propaganda, though except for a time or two I never thought "propaganda." It seemed grabbed from life, as authentic as Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, which also seemed genuine. What keeps it from being "mere" propaganda is both the verisimilitude and the individuality of human experiences, the true-to-life details of human existence. If anything, the doomed dystopian love story reminded me of Orwell's 1984, but given its reality, Naked Earth was better. What's missing, I'm guessing is that this was not the story Chang would have chosen to tell -- beautifully, brilliantly written, but she would've put it some place else and taken a different path. So while each page is worth the price of admission, as a whole the book may be less compelling for readers without some knowledge of Chinese history. Naked Earth, in sum, attests to Chang's brilliance as a writer. Gorgeous, genius, gentle, but missing just a sliver of the writer's heart. [3½★]
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