Spencer Wise

The great premise of a Jewish family making shoes in China is slowly dissipated due to a leisurely plot. The background politics and evocative writing only goes so far to keep the reader entranced. Yes Spencer Wise can cleverly write with long sentences like “I almost forgot the heat, the sweat streaking down my temple, my flushed cheeks, the sweet cement hardening in my nail beds, and I almost forgot I was in a seat, no less a factory or one in China for that matter-that was how far out I’d let myself drift.”
There is some redemption as the novel ends. Wrapping up stems of the story doesn’t have enough punch. The cliched father son healing fails to emote enough to make this a worthwhile endeavor.
… (más)

‘’We’ve always been citizens of the world. No, that’s not true. We’ve always been outsiders. On the run.’’

Alex is at a crossroads. Working in his father’s factory in China, he comes in close contact with a country of paradoxes, secrets, traditions and constant unrest. In 2015, the steps towards change are small, uncertain and insufficient. Apart from his work duties, Alex has to navigate a tricky path. His father’s ruthless work ‘’ethic’’, his mother’s lectures on Jewish identity and his own wishes and perceptions. But he isn’t naive. He observes, understands and decides to be a part of the change. Ivy, a bright Chinese woman, helps him to realise his role when uncertainty is the only certain influence in everyone’s lives.

Spencer Wise creates a beautiful story, guiding us through the journey of a young man from Boston in the alleys and canals of Guangdong, in Beijing’s legendary streets. From the technology of 2015 back to 1989, the days of Tiananmen and its open wounds. Ivy’s narration of the Massacre is haunting, hair-raising, one of the most exquisite passages I’ve ever read. He weaves a tale born of revolution seeds and Golem references, of the struggle between following your personal principles and carrying the heavy burden of your family and your father’s orders.

Seen through the eyes of Alex, a brilliant, sensitive, kind and very realistic character, this is a story of change, disillusionment, love and determination. A difficult, demanding subject, written with sensitivity, clarity and tenderness.

‘’It’s a bright moon outside, and from the window of my house I can see the skeletal grey of the factory, the banners draped like sashes and the deep artificial red of Mandarin characters demanding change, and I’m wondering how the fuck this Jewish kid from Boston could somehow wind up a YouTube hero in the Chinese Revolution.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/… (más)

Alex Cohen is a twenty-six-year old Jewish Bostonian working in his father’s shoe factory in southern China. He reluctantly accepts his father’s demand that he should take on greater responsibility for the running of the factory but soon discovers that producing cheap shoes for the mass-market comes at a cost. Health and safety regulations are almost non-existent, the workers are exploited and badly paid and nothing can be achieved without bribes being paid to government officials. When he tries to raise these issues with his father, Fedor, his concerns are dismissed as a reflection of his naïvety about the way in which business operates. He is told that experience will soon show what it takes to survive in a cut-throat world, but does he really want to accept this, or would he rather forge his own way and attempt to improve conditions for the workers.
He then meets college-educated Ivy, a seamstress who is slightly older than he and who is secretly attempting to stir up a rebellion amongst her fellow-workers, wanting them to form a union and he begins to see her as an ally in his desire for change. As he starts to become romantically involved with her, he discovers not only much more about the appalling, inhumane conditions faced by the workers in the factory, but also about the much wider international fight for human rights. Along with Zhang, a friend of Ivy’s and the leader of the Democratic Revolutionary Party, they plan a day of non-violent protest by the workers in the factory, but can this be achieved in a country used to controlling its citizens by force? Ivy knows first-hand how, in the past, protests were met with violence because her sister was killed at Tiananmen Square in 1989. However, she hopes that change can now be achieved in a more peaceful way. Will Alex be able to not only stand up to his father, but also to the powerful Party officials who are keen to recruit Alex to inform them about any workers who are intent on doing anything which will disturb the status quo.
Against a background of social, economic, technological and political change, this story offers a thought-provoking look at the true cost of “out-sourcing” factory production to countries which can provide a source of labour to meet an ever-increasing demand from the Western market for cheap goods. With his focus on maintaining profit-margins, Alex’s father is apparently content to ignore the exploitation of his workers to achieve this. He is happy to live, with his mistress and his son, in the luxurious comfort of a five-star hotel whilst his employees live in over-crowded dormitories, faced with long queues for the too few showers and with hot water available only at 8am and 8pm. Fedor sees nothing wrong with this; he believes he has made his own sacrifices to achieve what he has: he has “poured his life’s blood into the factory for the sake of his family.”
The fraught relationship between Alex and Fedor is central to the story and their arguments and differences of opinion are used as “vehicles” to explore the personal, political, economic, social issues which are central to the story of a young man’s coming of age in a foreign country. Fedor is portrayed as a greedy, uncaring, unscrupulous and ruthless business man whose main concern is making a profit, at whatever the cost to his employees – or even his son. Although there were moments when it was clear that Fedor loved Alex, most of the time he seemed only to want to control him and to want to mould him into a replica of himself. There were moments when I really struggled with the almost caricature-like portrayal of a ruthless Jewish businessman and wondered whether this would have been tolerated had the characterisation be written by a non-Jewish author. In fact, I thought that all the characters were rather superficially and stereotypically portrayed, consequently there were times when my irritation and discomfort about this became a distraction from the more thought-provoking aspects of the author’s story-telling.
What I particularly did enjoy about the story was the author’s exploration of Alex’s struggles with becoming his own person and with what it meant to be Jewish whilst living away from his home in Boston, where he knew his place in the community. The parallels he drew between the persecution faced by Jews and his father’s exploitation and displacement of his Chinese workforce (which Alex recognised but Fedor didn’t!) added an interesting and thought-provoking dimension to the story and highlighted Alex’s ongoing struggle to find out where he truly belonged. I also appreciated the moments of Yiddish humour which permeated the story, as well as the cultural and linguistic misunderstandings which occurred!
Although I think the story very effectively captured elements of the economic, social and political background of China, I felt disappointed that I never got any real sense of the actual countryside in which the action was taking place. The closest I got to feeling that I was seeing what the characters were seeing was when Alex and Ivy visited Tiananmen Square – and maybe that was more influenced by the countless images I have seen on television and in the newspapers than it was by the author’s description!
As a personal read, although there were elements of the writing I enjoyed, once I had finished I felt vaguely disappointed that it hadn’t quite lived up to its promise, hence my rating – although in fairness, I would like to have been allowed to give it an extra half star! However, the range of thought-provoking themes in this book would make it a very good choice for reading groups.… (más)