The Dissident by Nell Freudenberger

I found this book on an old booklist of mine, so I'm not sure who recommended it to me. The ending of this book came out of nowhere and I really disliked it, so overall I'd say that I didn't like the book. However, there were aspects of the experience of reading the book that I did enjoy. I just wouldn't recommend it.

The book is about a Chinese artist named Yuan Zhao who comes to the United States for a year-long experience. He is sponsored by a local university who expects him to exhibit his work in two shows during the year. Zhao lives in Los Angeles with an American family, the Travers, and teaches art at an all-girls high school.

Freudenberger could have written a book exclusively about the Travers and the high school, which the mother teaches in and the daughter attends. There were complicated relationships within the family, as well as between family members and other characters. The situations these characters faced, and their decisions, were compelling and well-crafted.

However, the book also covers Zhao and his life, both currently in Los Angeles and in a burgeoning artists' community in China in the early 1980's. Zhao's difficulty in adjusting to his role as a guest at the Travers' and a teacher is palpable. The descriptions of the artists' colony he becomes a part of in China are clear and evocative. It was a window into a time and place I had never seen or even thought about.

Where the author veers off course a little is in her insistence on having her characters grapple with existential questions like "what is art" along all the other things going on in the book. I think she is trying to make some statements about art but I don't know what they are. A struggle with identity is one thing to cover in a novel like this; comments around performance art are better suited for an editorial in a weird magazine that I don't read.

However, I would have forgiven her the detours into art critique because I liked the characters (or at least how well-developed they were) and enjoyed learning about art in Communist China. The ending of the book, though, superseded its appeal. Most of the characters' resolutions were satisfying but Zhao's was neither satisfying nor what it should have been: a confirmation of the themes throughout the book.

ps: I just learned that this blog has at least one loyal fan, and she shares a first name with the author of this book. Hello and thanks for reading!