the girl who played go

I was rummaging in the bargain bin at Book Sale when a jacketless hardcover book caught my eye — creamy ochre with a red spine. The title, the girl who played go by  Shan Sa (book # 111 of 2009, #18 for the FFP Diversity Challenge) sounded interesting,  and as the summary was lost to the missing dust jacket, I decided to get it anyway, because it was only P50 (around $1).

I knew that Go is the Chinese strategy game comparable to chess (or checkers), and because I’ve read some novels  that revolve around chess, such as The Eight by Katherine Neville and The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte, I was quite intrigued by this book.

the girl who played go is the story of two people who meet daily in the Square of a Thousand Winds to play a game of go: a 16-year old Chinese girl and a Japanese soldier, both unnamed.

Set during the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in the 1930s, the story is told by the alternating points of view of the two characters, who both have their own issues to deal with amidst the turbulence of the war.

The Chinese girl is on the brink of discovering love, sexuality, and the complications of stepping into womanhood. Meanwhile the soldier is losing his idealism, growing more and more jaded about his mission, missing his family, besieged by the memories of the past, and flinching at the atrocities of war.

To the two characters, the game of go is a reprieve from their strife-ridden lives. Both are skilled players, and the game goes on and on, almost wordlessly, and with each move their fates twine together more tightly, from which they will later find no escape.

When I read the book, I had no idea what was in store for me, and so I was confused  because it took me three chapters to realize the point of view was alternating. But I soon settled into reading it, as the chapters are short and succinct (around 2-5 pages) but there is something quiet and soothing about Shan Sa’s writing that kept me reading.

Early on, the book reminded me of Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, which I read (and loved) back in 2005, for  my Great Books class. I thought it was because the authors have similar backgrounds – Chinese writers based in France, but as I read through the novel, I realized that the girl’s  side of the story, particularly her relationship with the two boys, strongly resembled the relationship of the Little Chinese seamstress with the unnamed protagonist and his friend Luo: from the personalities of the boys, to the unrequited love, the revolutionary ideals (although Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is set decades later, during the Cultural revolution), right down to the abortion scene.

But there is the matter of Go, though, and the opposing player, so it shakes up the plot, and takes on a war theme as opposed to the theme of books and reading in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (books trump war!) but I wish Shan Sa (who must have read Sijie’s work, titled Balzac et la petite tailleuse Chinoise which was vastly successful in France  that they even made a film about it) had given the girl a different plot background so her novel can stand up better against Sijie’s.

I liked how the novel uses the game of Go and the juxtaposition of a Chinese character and a Japanese character to mirror the theme of war, and how the namelessness of the main characters (and the  non-descript, non-capitalized title “the girl who played go” on the frontispiece and on the spine) is much like the indistinct stones or playing pieces of Go (no royal organizational chart like in chess) show them as nameless pawns in a bigger game, i.e. the war between Japan and China, or even Life).

I think though, that the author could have explained the game more (to aid readers like me who are not familiar with the game) or used the actual game play as a major element in the story, like how chess was used in The Eight or The Flanders Panel.

And while the characters’ points of view are distinct, I could have used some more depth that would have made the characters more endearing, or memorable after I finished the book, but I guess the namelessness and the brevity also serve to underscore the fatalistic message of war: ultimately, there are no victors.

***

My copy: hardcover, no dustjacket

My copy: 3.5/5 stars

*cover photo from Wikipedia