The Train to Lo Wu

by Jess Row

Book Overview

The characters in Jess Row's remarkable fiction inhabit "a city that can be like a mirage, hovering above the ground: skyscrapers built on mountainsides, islands swallowed in fog for days." This is... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385337906
• ISBN13: 9780385337908
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Dial Press
• Length: 190 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Spare and Beautiful

The Train to Lo Wu contains story after story, on the challenges and hope of cultural disconnect. Row uses his language sparely, creating just the bones of each story, but while including every detail necessary to make the vignette impactful and real. Overall, this is a beautiful book, readable while being intellectually challenging.

A pocketful of beautiful zen koans.

The Train to Lo Wu is a remarkable collection of short stories organized around the themes of Zen Buddhism, alienation, and wonder. Often told in flashbacks, these stories feature protagonists who find themselves in a crisis as they struggle with a recent loss (e.g. marriage, friend, artistic talent). These crises typically include sudden insights and dramatic changes in perspective as they try to find their way back to an understanding of the world and their place in it. Zen Buddhism is featured prominently in their journeys. The stories are wonderfully written, and include beautifully realized descriptions of the Hong Kong landscape and the people who populate it. An excellent and thought-provoking collection.

Place and character

The title story displays the covert sensuality of a young woman in a society that does not recognize her value and does not provide much hope for security. These stories explore the territory of social morays when they collide with mass consumerism and the western world's influences on China. What happens when the West moves East? Within Row's complex narratives one finds that time in China moves steadily and lives vibrantly, that cities animate the structures on which they stand and that characters convey through the senses the social complexities of a place few Westerners have visited. As rare as such artistry has become, Row's stories carry one away to this foreign land and further into unfamiliar emotional territories. The internal landscapes are as rich and vividly alive as the descriptions of a China that is sensual, intelligent and exotic.

Fantastic Collection of Stories

I've read and re-read several stories in this collection several times - standouts include: "Train to Lo Wu", "Heaven Lake", and "Secret of Bats". Not only are these stories completely original, and moreso, completely convincing in their delivery, but they are also very easy to read - enough so that I have recommended this book to many who don't often read short stories, and they have all loved it very much. I really can't say enough nice things about these stories - clearly this collection is one of the standouts of the last few years, and is gaining popularity among readers. Some have remarked how there's not enough about Hong Kong here - they've missed the point, I'm sorry to say. Regardless of class, race or gender, these stories deal with subjects to which we all can relate - isolation, compassion, mistrust, love - and each story in this collection resonates as finely as the tines of a tuning fork. I would recommend it to anyone who likes fine writing, effective story telling, and strong subject matter.

Astonishing Beginning

I have followed Jess Row's work since his remarkable story, "The Secret of Bats" appeared in the Best American Short Stories 2001 (excerpted, I think, on this page.) His follow-up in "Best American 2003," "Heaven Lake," was an equally breathtaking work which rivaled the first offering and demonstrated his breadth in terms of voice and subject matter. I was delighted to see his collection appear with both of these stories. The title story, and "The American Girl" are particular gems. The stories unfold tensely, in spare, elegant sentences, towards conclusions that feel startling and perfectly right. The ways that lovers part in these stories, that father observes daughter, are so finely observed that you cannot help but feel you've seen this very gesture before. Anyone who has been to Hong Kong, or traveled on the mainland will find a special connection to the work, but his vision of pre-Giuliani New York and his insight into the psychology of immigration and travel will have appeal for everyone.