In the first scene of An Yu's Braised Pork, Jia Jia opens her bathroom door and discovers that her husband, Chen Hang, has drowned himself in their tub. From that point to the final, dreamlike subaquatic scene of this poignant debut novel, water is both life-giving and a fearful void. Her husband left behind nothing but a crude sketch of a creature with a fish body and a man's head. Weeks earlier, on one of his infrequent calls to her while away on business in Tibet, he told her he had dreamt of a creature that was "barely a man" with the body of a fish. He never mentioned it again, and the sketch holds no clues. The fish-man becomes a touchstone as Jia Jia questions her place in the world.
Chen Hang's suicide upends Jia Jia's place in Beijing's patriarchal society. Although she veers between grief, embarrassment and anger, she prides herself on controlling her emotions. Strong feelings, nonetheless, emerge in her subconscious. She experiences dreams where water runs through her bedroom; it eventually "churned and threatened to sink everything in its path." She sees a silver fish and, although it bears no resemblance to her husband's sketch, dives under the water and swims with it. Jia Jia's attempts at empowerment combine with the quest for the meaning of her husband's sketch, and this takes her out of Beijing city to rural Tibet, where Chen Hang had his disturbing dream.
An Yu's first novel is a moving, magical parable about a young woman's journey of self-discovery and agency. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.