1945 in Japanese occupied Shanghai, and the equivocal status of the
Eurasian provides a first novel of considerable sensibility and
searing revelation- certainly for Sylvia Chen who at twenty knows
only the fragmentation of several worlds- and an identity with
none. She belongs to a group which is politically liberal, foreign,
or like herself- of mixed blood; the Jastrows who are Jewish,
Robert Bruno who is Swiss, Larry Casement who is Irish, and Mimi
Lambert and Feng Huang- Eurasian. Mimi, impulsive, childish,
passionate- but rarely thoughtful, falls in love with Robert, knows
all the volupte and excitement of a first affair which ends in her
rejection when Robert's fear of his father is stronger than his
love for her. She loses his child, and goes on the streets to seek
"promiscuity as a mortification". Sylvia, who wears Chinese or
European clothes alternately, "jockeying her dissatisfaction with
herself in each", thinks she has found the answer to her
ambivalence in Feng Huang who is in turn fractious and restless. He
tries to induct her into the cause which may provide a purpose-
Chinese Communism- is responsible for the death of her cousin, and
it is then that she breaks with him.... Certainly not an easy book
to place, but the increasing interest in old barriers and new
frontiers in other parts of the world (cf. Kamala Markandaya)-
offers a potential. Diana Cheng has handled her people, and
possibly herself, with much of the same suggestive awareness.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in 1945, The Frontiers of Love
passes effortlessly in and out of Asian and Western fields of
reference to explore the issue of cultural identity in a city
dominated by Western colonialism. Diana Chang uses psychological
portrayal, historical narrative, and sociological observation to
achieve a multi-dimensional view of a city both Chinese and
Western, liberating and oppressive, national and international. As
the character Feng observes of Shanghai, "Strictly speaking, it
could not be called Chinese, though it was inhabited mostly by
Chinese - Chinese who were either wealthy, Westernized, or prayed
to a Christian God".
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