BOOK REVIEW: RED YEAR, BY JAN SHAPIN
I have the same feeling about Jan Shapin’s books as some might have about a well-priced television in a Black Friday Sale: I will (at least metaphorically) make a running leap for any opportunity to read her books. Shapin writes with a thoughtful humanity that effectively breathes life into the smallest moments, without losing sight of the big picture. It is, after all, the small moments that tend to capture our attention in literature; it’s less the fireworks and more the quiet glances, the poignant comments, the laden pauses before responding.
As with the previous books I read and reviewed (A Desire Pathand A Snug Life Somewhere), Red Year is historical fiction that places the main character in the much larger events that are occurring in the world. In Red Year, those events include the ongoing revolution in China, with the various factions warring for control of that nation. American-born Rayna Prohme follows her visions of a better world, along with her journalist husband, to China in the late 1920s to support the burgeoning revolution and explore what’s happening on the ground.
While there, she meets and frankly becomes obsessed with Comintern agent Mikhail Borodin, who has been sent to China to support the cause of Sun Yat-sen. Sun has died, but his wife, known as Madame Sun, is carrying on his work, even as she realizes the precariousness of her own position. (It’s worth noting that Madame Sun’s sister May-ling would marry Chiang Kai-shek and join him in setting up the competing Chinese government in Taiwan.)
As is usually the case in events such as these, loyalties tend to become somewhat flexible, and Borodin eventually finds himself heading back to Moscow. Rayna insists on going with him, and she brings Madame Sun as well. But there things take a turn for the worse: Rayna has few allies in the Soviet Union, and Madame Sun discovers that she has almost none. At some point, it becomes clear that Madame Sun needs to leave Moscow as soon as possible, but the government blocks the needed exit visa. Rayna decides she wants to apply to the Lenin School, and she’s somewhat surprised by how willing they are to have her join — until she realizes that what they really want is for her to exploit her friendship with Madame Sun.
It will be up to Rayna to find out if she put all her strength of personality and character to the test to help her friend get out of Moscow and back to China, so she can continue her work of fighting for the women of China.
I had only a cursory understanding of the revolutionary events in China, although the names Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek were not unknown to me, nor were the main parts of their stories. (I think even Madame Sun existed somewhere deep in my memory, as it felt vaguely familiar.) What I didn’t realize is just how complicated the situation in China was at the time — which I freely acknowledge to be my own ignorance and naiveté — as it wasn’t as simple as one type of government or another type gaining ascendance. There were various regional factions, powerful factions at that, to be taken into consideration, and it ultimately became a very convoluted game of chess with multiple players trying to control the pieces on the board.
What I love about Shapin’s writing, in general and in Red Year, is how she sheds light on these revolutionary complexities by highlighting the events that readers can track through the story, without having to create their own visual of the different players and who was doing what, what, and how. By allowing us to see events through Rayna’s eyes, and particularly since Rayna herself isn’t a political savant and is trying to work out some of the complexities for herself along the way, we have the opportunity to see the story unfold and appreciate the very human dramas that occurred as it did.
Highly recommended. As with all Jan Shapin’s book.
Year of publication: 2017
Number of pages: 286
Number of pages: 286
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