The Eye of Jade Book

It’s hardly surprising that this beautifully turned novel about a strong-willed Chinese woman working as a private investigator in Beijing is such a delight: the cachet that accompanies most novels published by Picador is usually in place: as it most certainly is with Diane Wei Liang’s The Eye of Jade. What makes the novel particularly interesting is its refusal to be slotted into any one genre: it’s a literary novel, undoubtedly (the publisher’s imprint guarantees that); it’s also a crime novel, pushing satisfactorily most of the buttons that we expect in that field. And it’s a comedy: the sardonic humour involving the heroine’s fraught relations with those around her are perfectly judged. Mei, the protagonist, is an investigator. A friend of her mother, known as ‘Uncle Chen’, asks her to track down a Han-dynasty jade that vanished from a museum during the terrible upheavals of the Cultural Revolution. Was the jade a victim of the brutal, philistine Red Guards, ruthlessly shattering the great legacies of the past? Or are more complex subterfuges involved? As Mei digs deeper, she begins to unravel a series of labyrinthine mysteries – some with resonances even within her own family. Detective fiction is a much-plundered genre, both by genre practitioners and those with more literary aims – and it’s the latter writers who are more likely to come a cropper when attempting to reinvent the standard tropes of the field. But Diane Wei Liang avoids all such pitfalls. This is a provocative, intriguing and accomplished piece of writing. --Barry ForshawRead More