Might have enjoyed this more if I knew a bit more about China's history, but now I know more than I did before...

It took me a little while to get into this, but ultimately I enjoyed it. It was an interesting, fictionalized, look at a piece of history that I know nothing about. Madame Mao herself gets swept up in the role she feels she must play, and ultimately causes her own downfall. This makes me want to learn more about the time period, so if anyone has suggestions for something that's not too dry, I'd love to hear them.

I was intrigued by an inside look into the life of Mao through his wife’s eyes, but I was disappointed in the overall narrative. It started slow because it took me a while to get used to the unusual cadence of the writing. The first third is a vicious cycle of our title character (before she become’s Mao’s wife, she goes through several name changes) falling into tumultuously passionate love with various men. It gets a little redundant as those relationships deteriorate, one after another.

When she finally does meet Mao, before he becomes the de facto ruler or China, she recognizes his power and clings to him because of it. “I sense a peculiar side of my lover’s nature. It is his ability to deal with suffering. It is what makes Mao.” The next third of the book is Madame complaining about how her husband shuts her away and doesn’t involve her in his world. By the time she finally does become a visible force in Mao’s politics, I had enough. There was so much backstabbing and double crossing, and all Madame ever wanted was to be in the spotlight, and she had no qualms about keeping her position no matter the cost.

I just couldn’t feel enthusiastic about a character who was selfish, duplicitous, and unsympathetic. I didn’t get a feel for how Mao’s policies affected the nation as a whole, just how Madame thought her own treatment was unfair.

This was a great historical novel about Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Ching. Madame Mao is not just the White-Boned Demon everyone labeled her to be. Through her novel, Min vividly paints the life of Madame Mao Jiang Ching and her transformation from a lowly commoner to the most powerful woman in China. The epigraph Min includes describes Madame Mao's life:

You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny. (Brihadaranyaka Upanishads IV.4.5)

Desire leads to actions that can have unwanted consequences. Madame Mao, being driven by her desire to be known and surpass Mao, commits many deeds that leads to her demise.
Only by carefully evaluating all our choices and actions can we acquire the wisdom to make our destiny.