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In any number of ways, Ellie Cooper could appear an almost generic US Army Iraq War veteran. Daughter of a single mother, born into an evangelical Christian family, herself born-again but now lapsed into non-belief, she is suffering the aftereffects of her Army service – a lame leg seriously damaged in a bomb blast and PTSD. But in other ways, she is strikingly unusual. She followed her Christian husband to China and left him when she found him in bed with another woman. But instead of running back home, she almost unaccountably stayed in Beijing and is now living on the fringes of a community of artists, drinking too much and dropping the occasional Percocet when the pain in her leg becomes unbearable. It is an aimless existence, but one that will change dramatically when one of her artist friends calls on her for a little help. Before she knows it, she is on the run, pursued by a variety of largely anonymous and very threatening individuals and unable to tell whom she can trust (perhaps no one) and who wishes her ill. Her flight takes her to many of the primary cultural and religious sites from one end of China to the other. It is directed in part by a rather mysterious man, Zhou Zheng'an, whom she thinks of as Creepy John, who may or may not be on her side, and in part by her participation in an elaborate online role-playing game where her avatar is called Little Mountain Tiger. She is tested both in the virtual and in the real universe and while she is frightened, doubtful, and often terrified, in the end she manages to rise, however shakily, to the occasion. While what is going on is sometimes as puzzling to the reader as it is to Ellie, and certain plot elements remain unresolved, Ellie is herself a strong and engaging character, Further, the China that we see though her particular perspective – neither insider nor complete outsider – is an unusual one. It also explains why it is that some things are never quite made clear. Despite the weaknesses that remind us that this is indeed a first novel, as a portrait of a young woman finding her way out of passive naivete to an individual identity in a country very far from her native soil, it is original and engaging. § Yvonne Klein is a writer, translator, and retired college English professor who lives in Montreal.
Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, August 2011
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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