Red Thread

It is impossible to portray the concepts of love, pain and loss without appearing cliched. Hasn't it all been done before? Readers continue to crave a refreshing view, but paradoxically, authors sometimes have to hark back to the past to conceive it. Jose, in his sixth novel, concocts a haunting atmosphere by juxtaposing ancient and contemporary Shanghai through the medium of a text called 'Six Chapter of a Floating Life'. This manuscript (made up of four booklets, with part of it missing) allows a modern love to be verbalized and understood by two heroes, Shen, a Chinese art dealer and Ruth, who comes from Australia; It is as if their romantic destiny has already been mapped out, when it becomes apparent that the love story in the manuscript echoes their own relationship. But to make matters more complicated, their partnership blossoms into something unorthodox when Ruth introduces Han, her soul sister, into the situation. It is not described sensationally, as a crude threesome; Ruth is infatuated with the manuscript and both Shen and Han, and 'Six Chapters' act as the adherent to the complex web. An unsettled feeling runs through the story when the elusive Han decides she's had enough fun, and Shen shirks all his worldly goods in the pursuit of the missing chapters, as life continues to echo the text. But his search becomes obsessive when Ruth begins to suffer from the same ill fortune as the heroine. The 'red thread' is more than a link, more like the vein, the source sustaining life. It is both a connection, and an eternal chain. In this cynical age, it is actually refreshing for a story to be so devoted in portraying the 'love conquers all' beat to its heart, without being naive in its execution. (Kirkus UK)