Faraway: A Novel (Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan)

If you are searching for another world bereft of logic or sense, this is the ideal book. The author writes the story of his father’s aneurism. The father traveled from Taiwan to the mainland, China, in order to visit his first family and take a tour of the countryside. The main character and his mother must hurry to the run-down filthy hospital where the father lies in a helpless coma, attended by his half-brothers. This quickly descends into a dreamscape of relentless sameness day after day, only relieved by the horror of the situation and his father’s condition. The author writes these situations with brutal honesty and gross descriptions that linger with this reader long after turning the page. The author is relentless in bringing the bestial horror of the father’s medical condition, the strangeness of the strange land and customs and the tedious repetition of the many days attempting to transfer his father away from this purgatory. Resonant writing but as endless as the scenario which is described.