  | Book Details Title: The Birds of Shanghai |
Book Description“[A] universal book about secret, sometimes obsessive, impossible love…I would be one of the first to say this book is important in many ways…It is filled with curiosity that keeps its sorrow from being too severe.” -David J. Shapiro, poet and art historian ||| “Stunning and vivid and not to be forgotten…A personal and intimate depiction of something fascinating and mysterious to the reader, drawing us in like a magnet.” -Lois Leardi, novelist ||| Seth Rosenfeld is a recent college graduate from New York, teaching English in 1980s Shanghai. There he meets Lan Ming, an engaging and sagacious traveler from the provinces, who stirs Seth’s unexplored homosexual desires. Lan Ming seems to be everything Seth is not: unguarded, spontaneous, and at ease with his sexuality. They fall in love in the shadows and back alleys of a Shanghai about to undergo a remarkable transformation, and also under the watchful eye of the Public Security Bureau. || But Lan Ming has secrets. How does he stay in Shanghai without rousing the suspicions of his “work unit” back home? Who are the street friends he won’t let Seth meet? Especially, where does his money come from? || Seth’s search for the truth about Lan Ming takes him on a personal journey—into Shanghai’s secretive gay culture, into distant Chinese provinces, into his own psyche—as he discovers some devastating truths about his very nature. || And just as Seth is getting closer to uncovering the mystery of Lan Ming, Shanghai erupts in anti-government protests, and the ever-looming Public Security Bureau closes in on the pair’s illegal relationship… ||| Daniel Silverman is a former academic. He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley. This is his first novel. Read more Customers Review: The Birds of Shanghai by Daniel Silverman, 2020:Daniel Silverman’s The Birds of Shanghai is an engaging exploration of love, need, and (sometimes painful) self-discovery. The story, the writing, and the larger themes make this a page-turning read, and an outstanding first novel. Right from the start, the reader is transported to 1980’s Shanghai, where we meet Seth Rosenfeld, a young American and recent college graduate. Seth has been working as an English teacher at a university in Shanghai for several months. The reader joins Seth just as he is about to meet a young Chinese man named Lan Ming.Lan Ming’s attention and outgoing nature help to draw the more reserved Seth out of his shell, and Seth finally allows himself to explore his life-long attraction to men. Like many young lovers, Seth and Lan Ming lose themselves in this new experience of couple-hood, which is infinitely complicated by the repressive Chinese regime. In the 1980’s in general, and in China specifically, their love does not come without risks, and Seth and Lan Ming find themselves facing increasing social pressures and dangers.Watching Seth navigate this new side of himself is at once exciting and nerve-wracking. The surveillance culture that the Chinese take for granted is all new to Seth and there are unknowns at every turn. As the unrelenting obstacles to their love increase, Seth begins to wonder if Lan Ming is really who he seems to be. As Seth tries to sort out what is true and what is not, we feel his anguish and his unraveling.The themes underlying the story are universal. There is the exhilarating excitement of new love, followed by the internal struggle of merging lives with someone while also trying not to lose all of oneself. There is the disillusionment that so often comes with the onset of decidedly non-romantic adult problems (like the need for money, housing, and employment). There are also the inevitable self-discoveries that come to the surface when one is faced first with their best self, and later with their worst. The reader is a witness to all of it, and feels Seth’s pain of coming to understand that life and love may not be exactly what he had expected. But in the end, we are left with a feeling that Seth is returning to a version of himself, and will manage and live with all these changes, and with the man he is becoming.From a mechanical standpoint, Silverman’s plotting and pace move the story along nicely, and there is a pleasing preciseness to the words that hints at Silverman’s previous career as an academic. Nothing is wasted here. Each sentence says what it means to say with no unnecessary embellishment, and yet the disciplined style does not take away from the deep emotion of the story. On the contrary, there is a disarming element of intimacy in the writing, and an undercurrent of sly humor which relieves a bit of the sadness inherent in this relatively quick read. The non-intrusive prose allows the reader to easily slip into the story and to fully inhabit another world.At times the story reads like an intimate confessional, (almost as if we are eavesdropping from a nearby table in a café), and at other times like a travelogue, with these lovely little slice-of-life anecdotes of life in China. Silverman fluently weaves multiple story threads together so that the reader can experience various views of Shanghai. Travelers and expatriates will particularly appreciate and relate to many of Seth’s experiences of living in a foreign culture and attempting to navigate life in a second language.In sum, Silverman’s first novel is a fascinating and thought-provoking read that works on multiple levels. Whether read as a love story, a twenty-something coming-of-age story, or as a cautionary tale of what life is like when all privacy is lost in a repressive regime, The Birds of Shanghai will leave the reader wanting to hear more about these characters, and also hoping that this will not be Silverman’s only novel. | |
3 reviews