[.uk] Farewell My Concubine: Novel, A (ISBN 0060976446)

Definitely worth investigating......both novel and movie:
It was a really sad story. I feel even more sad after the actor Leslie Cheung(the one who starred Deiyi) commited suicide a couple of days ago. I cried every time I watched the movie. What is really sad about Deiyi is that he could never tell the difference between real life and the life on the stage. So did Leslie Cheung.

Left me in tears:
This book is not at all what I expected. I thought I would learn a little about Chinese drama and music and instead I was able to experience it for myself. I became Dieyi after the first chapter and felt all the pain that he endured. I was able to understand and connect to why he had never learned to tell the difference from fiction and reality. It is worth reading and now I am looking foward to seeing the movie.

watch the movie--avoid the book:
I hate to rain on the parade, but I found the book to be dreadful. "Farewell My Concubine" is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I was looking forward to the novel immensely, but it disappointed on virtually every level. The prose reads like the book was meant for students in junior high (though I acknowledge that might be the fault of the translator), and nothing is left to your imagination: just in case you're too thick to pick up on the fact that Dieyi, one of the main characters, is merging with his stage role, the book tells you so explicitly over and over and OVER. It's unsubtle and verges on insulting the reader's intelligence. The novel constantly violates the cardinal "Show, don't tell" rule of good writing. The three main characters, so rich and textured in the film, come out flat and two-dimensional here (Juxian is nothing more than a cipher). After a while, I pretended I was reading about three different characters entirely, just so I didn't have to associate them with the characters I loved in the film. The movie "Farewell My Concubine" is a feast. Every time I watch it, I see something new in it, something else to admire. I couldn't believe it had emerged from this. Watch the movie, but whatever you do, don't read the novel; you'll be wasting your time.

A companion to the movie:
The book will deepen your understanding of the movie. The movie, brilliant as it is, plays like a "montage of highlights" and cuts out a lot--as films generally have to do--like what the two heros were doing during the eleven years before they perform one last time. It also ends differently. (By the way, if you're in the US, unless you've seen the DVD, you've only seen part of the film. The US distributor, Miramax, cut around 20 minutes out of the film as it's seen in the rest of the world, making the already fast pace even faster.)

Work of art:
The characters seem so real,..you will laugh, def cry , a lot of drama,.. the characters come to life and you will swear it wasnt something you read but stories friends told you,...hard to put the book down and say goodbye to these new found friends,...buy it !