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Question 4: Chung Mae
We follow along with Chung Mae throughout the novel as she makes all kinds of interesting decisions. As she navigated these current and upcoming changes did you find yourself agreeing or relating to her decisions, or did she frustrate you with the things that she did and the decisions she made. Did you like her character, and were rooting for her to figure things out, or did you experience something else?
Comments
I found her rather enigmatic, and never quite felt that I knew her very well - part of her was always hidden, which was an appropriate way to write her, I think. I was never quite sure how she would react to the next situation.
I wasn't entirely sold on the unusual (to say the least) pregnancy, and got curious enough to do some looking up. Seems that it has been a folklore motif for a long time, but there is no evidence from human biology that any part of the process could actually happen. So I decided just to take it as a curious device signaling something about things happening that were counter to cultural norms, and not to take it too seriously!
I also wasn't sold on the pregnancy. Nor on the (magical seeming to me) way they all got insurance and things all worked out. Where was the 2-year fight to get insurance money? The book had a rather fairy-tale quality to it, especially when one started to scratch the details. But I thought it was quite good at the interpersonal relationships And I suppose this is the advantage to writing a novel set in an imaginary country far from where the presumed leaders live - the interactions and society don't need to make complete sense to us - maybe it's better if they don't.
I did not like Chung Mae. I don't think we were supposed to like her. The other characters and their relationships were very well done. Convincing and real - and likeable. She was not. She was a vehicle for the magic.
I agree, I'm not sure I "liked" Chung Mae either, but I really appreciated a book that was written from the perspective of a middle aged woman who didn't have everything put together, made a lot of mistakes, but was rather human. Not the usual human perspective we get. I largely needed to just tune out the pregnancy piece since it was so weird.
She seemed relatively bright and driven, and was a creative entrepreneur, but with character flaws, and didn't let illiteracy hold her back. She reminded me of a guy I used to work with who was very uneducated, but had a brain that was able to connect ideas together really well, and worked like a dog, and as such was able to build successful businesses.
I thought that maybe Ryman could have touched a little bit more on the impact of the trauma that Chung Mae was going through with her brain being essentilly highjacked. It felt like it was portrayed more like Obiwan speaking to her like "the force" at times, rather than how disturbing it must have been (though it does go that way at times as well!)