ROMANCE

Chinese Whiskers

by Pallavi Aiyar
St. Martin's. 2012. 224p. ISBN 9781250014481. $22.99; ebk. ISBN 9781250014597. F
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Two Chinese cats—one born on the streets, the other to an orderly middle-class life—find their lives intertwined when they are adopted by the same couple. Told from the felines' point of view, the narrative alternates between the two cats. Through their eyes, we see the corruption and greed of small men and experience the fearful overreaction of humans to a virus carried by civet cats and the way it disrupts the animals' lives. We watch the building of the great stadium for the Olympics and observe the way the migrant workers, poor though they may be, manage to maintain a modicum of self-respect. The reader may wonder how much of the story is based on Pallavi's six years as a journalist in China (which he recounted in Smoke and Mirrors); the couple in the book are called Mr. and Mrs. A.
VERDICT While the cats are more anthropomorphized than in many novels that treat them as main characters, they are still engaging without being cloying. And the author paints a vivid portrait of the daily routines in the hutong neighborhoods of old Beijing. Fans of animal stories, as well as readers with a curiosity about daily life in modern China, will enjoy this. [See Prepub Alert, 6/11/12.]
Reviewed by Pamela O'Sullivan, SUNY Coll. at Brockport Lib. , Jan 04, 2013
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