Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch
by Dai Sijie
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dai SijieEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-06-06
ISBN: 1400077141
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch
Book Review: A Sweet Picaresque Novel that Never Fails to Charm
Summary: 4 Stars
I loved Dai Sijie's debut novel, "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress." I love the film, so when I learned Dai had written a second novel, "Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch," I bought a copy as soon as I could.
The star of "Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch" is, of course, Mr. Muo, himself, an earnest, beleaguered, forty-year-old virgin who's without charm, height, good eyesight, or good looks. However, none of that seems to matter.
Mr. Muo is a self-styled psychoanalyst (his degree is actually in linguistics), who's returned to his native China after eleven years of exile in Paris. While in Paris, Mr Muo became enamoured of both Freud and Lacan and even underwent psychoanalysis himself, though it must have been a very unconventional psychoanalysis for Dai's omniscient narrator tells us that Muo spoke Chinese, of which his analyst understood not a word
Muo has a private agenda for wanting to bring psychoanalysis to China: He wants to secure the release from prison of his university sweetheart, a thirty-six-year-old photographer named Volcano of the Old Moon. Volcano of the Old Moon is serving a life sentence for giving photographs of police brutality during the Tiananmen Square massacre to members of the Western press, however, the lecherous, mah-johngg playing Judge Di has promised Muo her release if only Muo can bring him one thing...a virgin to deflower. So, Muo becomes, what else? A virgin in search of a virgin.
Mr. Muo's quest becomes the throughline of this picaresque novel as the protagonist sets off on his bicycle for the southern provinces, a banner flying above his head that reads: "Interpreter of Dreams, Psychoanalyst Returned From France and Schooled in Freud and Lacan." Psychoanalysis proves to be hard to peddle in China, however, and Muo is soon branded a fortune-teller. No matter, he continues his quest and never loses sight of his goal, even likening Volcano of the Old Moon to Don Quixote's Dulcinea.
One would think finding a virgin in a country with a population as great as China's would be fairly easy, but for Mr. Muo, at least, it's not. He ends up in a mental hospital, from which he escapes; he ends up in a domestic workers' market, where he encounters several different problems; he ends up bobbing in the water near a seaside crab restaurant, and really, we aren't surprised at this turn of events at all.
"Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch" is a sweet, romanticized book, much like "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress," but it's less focused and more sprawling. Where Dai's first book was a perfectly structured, highly polished little gem, "Mr. Muo's Tavelling Couch" often rambles and the flashbacks slow down the pace. I know some people who didn't like the character of Mr. Muo, but I found his bumbling innocence both charming and endearing. Needless to say, I liked him a lot.
Anyone looking for a realistic view of China after the Cultural Revolution won't find it in this book. It's too sweet, too humorous, too gentle, too tongue-in-cheek. But therein lies its charm. I thought the ending was a little weak and I think readers looking for something as perfect as "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" might be disappointed, but still, even when it makes a misstep, "Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch" never fails to entertain and it never fails to charm.
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