Audiobook5 hours
Braised Pork
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
One autumn morning, Jia Jia walks into the bathroom of her lavish Beijing apartment to find her husband dead.
One minute she was breakfasting with him and packing for an upcoming trip, the next, she finds him motionless in
their half-full bathtub. Like something out of a dream, next to the tub Jia Jia discovers a pencil sketch of a strange
watery figure, an image that swims into Jia Jia’s mind and won’t leave.
The mysterious drawing launches Jia Jia on an odyssey across contemporary Beijing, from its high-rise apartments
to its hidden bars, as she encounters some of the people who call the city home, including a jaded bartender whose
caring support turns to a romantic interest. Unencumbered by a marriage that had constrained her, Jia Jia travels into
her past to try to discover things that were left unsaid by the people closest to her. Her journey takes her to the high
plains of Tibet, and even to a shadowy, watery otherworld, a place she both yearns and fears to go.
Exquisitely attuned to the complexities of human connection, and an atmospheric and cinematic evocation of
middle-class urban China, An Yu’s Braised Pork explores the intimate strangeness of grief, the indelible mysteries of
unseen worlds, and the energizing self-discovery of a newly empowered young woman.
One minute she was breakfasting with him and packing for an upcoming trip, the next, she finds him motionless in
their half-full bathtub. Like something out of a dream, next to the tub Jia Jia discovers a pencil sketch of a strange
watery figure, an image that swims into Jia Jia’s mind and won’t leave.
The mysterious drawing launches Jia Jia on an odyssey across contemporary Beijing, from its high-rise apartments
to its hidden bars, as she encounters some of the people who call the city home, including a jaded bartender whose
caring support turns to a romantic interest. Unencumbered by a marriage that had constrained her, Jia Jia travels into
her past to try to discover things that were left unsaid by the people closest to her. Her journey takes her to the high
plains of Tibet, and even to a shadowy, watery otherworld, a place she both yearns and fears to go.
Exquisitely attuned to the complexities of human connection, and an atmospheric and cinematic evocation of
middle-class urban China, An Yu’s Braised Pork explores the intimate strangeness of grief, the indelible mysteries of
unseen worlds, and the energizing self-discovery of a newly empowered young woman.
Related to Braised Pork
Related audiobooks
Daughter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ghost Music Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Monstrilio Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Scattered All Over the Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Magma: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Indelicacy: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Violets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Where the Wild Ladies Are Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oval Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mona: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cook: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Premonition: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Night Theater: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Burnt Sugar Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mrs. Caliban Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catch the Rabbit Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Memoirs of a Polar Bear Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Pond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Friends & Dark Shapes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to be both Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Hear Your Voice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Housekeeper and the Professor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Atlas of Reds and Blues: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bitter Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Long Corner Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEmergency: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Literary Fiction For You
The Hunger Games Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Covenant of Water Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stardust Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Poisonwood Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Parable of the Sower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tom Lake: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Yellowface: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Name of the Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Measure: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House in the Cerulean Sea Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5West with Giraffes: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Song of Achilles: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Before the Coffee Gets Cold: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Road Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kindred Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Left Hand of Darkness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Braised Pork
Rating: 3.7380952714285707 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
42 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In this otherworldly tale, Jia Jia is a modern Beijing woman whose husband dies under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind no clue other than a picture of a "fish-man" figure. Jia Jia's attempts to uncover the significance of this image leads her to some unexpected places, including a remote village in Tibet. This short novel starts out strong as a story about a woman liberated from the shackles of a loveless marriage, and ends up rather implausibly like folklore. I'm not quite sure what to make of it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Thanks to NetGalley and Edelweiss for my ARC.A debut novel with a gripping name paired with beautiful artwork. Totally sold on the superficial notes which are in fact in this readers opinion not superficial. I come to many of my first reads like this art work title and synopsis. Braised Pork. I mean if that does not make you at least want to pick it up you have no literary soul. BRAISED PORK. Awesome title. In short because the book is better read and experienced that given a synopsis which the publisher has done with great intrigue. The main protagonist Jia Jia lives in Beijing and comes come to her apartment to find that her husband, Chen Hang, who moments before was living is now dead. Dead in a bathtub. Dead in a bathtub with an unfolding piece of paper ((que the scene from No Country for Old men with that little wrapper unfolding "you stand to win it all")) on the paper is something that will set Jia Jia off on a journey. As nearly all novel journeys go Jia Jia will have to have adventures and meditate on her past to get anywhere at all. The sense of adventure in the story is heightened and altered by a deft use of magical realism where strange things are not explained. Is it real? Is what is happening not real? Who knows?! and who cares because that is the effect - ite beautiful and creepy and unsettling. In moves Murakamiesqe and harkening to the feelings the films by Guillermo del Toro bring to mind An Yu has written a debut that is profound and a joy to read because the story is engrossing and the writing is just so good. The unexplained allusions to water in dreams in descriptions in setting are just so good and baffling but that makes it good. In that way the work is cinematic and gave this reader pause to reflect and think about what they heck An Yu means. This in turn heightens the joy of reading it to flip back a section and reread things to get a better grip of the oblique thing being said. Braised pork is searching and a story about a woman finding herself in an adventure tale spanning Beijing and Tibet and its just beautiful. In turns of phrase both mysterious and poetic An Yu has burst forth in a compelling mysteriously weird magic-realist drama-thriller. Get it.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Just awful Orientalist tosh that plays into Western perceptions of Asian restrain- eye-rolling similes like "her skin was like white jade" and unoriginal detours into Murakami-esque surrealism combine to make this an utterly unsatisfying read. That it's even a lead debut baffles me
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A delightful book, beautifully written. On the face of it, it seems like an easy read, but there are many layers to this book; every reader will have their own interpretation of what the world of water and the tulips represent.