China Mountain Zhang

I really liked this book, but I'm finding it quite hard to pinpoint why. In a sense, not a lot actually happens, and yet it's extremely readable and engrossing.

In fact, that's unfair. There is a lot happening, but it's all personal. Small triumphs and small setbacks. There is no saving the world; no great heroics. What there is is breadth and depth. This feels like a comprehensively imagined world. We see many different aspects of it through several different sets of eyes as the characters try to live their lives in a future dominated by China.

Zhang is the through-thread, but every other chapter is told from someone else's point-of-view, often featuring Zhang in a minor role. Each chapter is also a complete episode in its own right. You'd think that might make the narrative too broken and bitty, but somehow it doesn't seem to matter.

Against some stiff competition, I think this is my favourite of the books I've read so far for the Women of Genre Fiction challenge, and maybe my favourite book of the year.