Customer Reviews
An emotionally gripping, roller-coaster ride through the lives of three fascinating women - By: A. Faulkner, 02 Oct 2008 
This is without doubt one of the best books I've ever read. It is a powerful, gripping story that takes you through act after act of what human beings are capable of doing on this Earth, sometimes in the most brutal fashion.
Based on the lives of three generations of women, it starts in turn of the 20th century China, when the Qing dynasty was starting to crumble & that way of life was coming to an end, taking you through the civil war, Mao coming to power, the Great Leap Forward & the Cultural Revolution before ending in the 70s when the author leaves for Britain.
This is a "no holding back" story of survival with frequent scenarios detailing the worst & most brutal of human suffering. Reading through makes you realise the many things in this world we take for granted: democracy, security, civil liberties & freedom. It is an epic life story seen through the eyes of three ordinary women. They weren't world leaders or iconic historical figures, but ordinary citizens living their lives in a regime that is regarded with controversy even to this day.
All in alll, although it's a book detailing suffering, fear & brutality it is an uplifting story of survival. You can't help but shed a tear for the person who survives, against alll the odds, to make a better life for themselves. Like Pandora's box, once opened you'll see alll the sins of the world come to fruition but one thing will remain at the end: hope.
Grossly overrated - By: Orkla, 31 Jul 2008 
This is probably the most boring & unenlightening book I have ever read. My wife was asked to read it as part of a literature appreciation group & said it was shocking in its revelations. I bought another copy of it from Waterstones for one of her friends & the assistant was gushing in her enthusiasm for it. I decided to read it & thus wasted an unnecessary amount of valuable time.
If you can believe 10% of what Jung Chang asks you to believe you will be stretching credulity. She is obsessed with her own family's righteousness in the face of unmitigated evil & her attention to trivialities shows a great sense of imagination.
Instead of a simple family tree we have a long boring tirade of the minutiae of everyday life affecting 900 million people - perhaps! I have no connection with China but the only other reviewer who claims to be Chinese is sceptical - & so am I.
This may be the only sort of material available on this era in Chinese history but we should not accept it at face value.
Don't waste your time on this. I wish I hadn't.
A Captivating Read - By: MiniN, 11 Jul 2008 This book tells 150 years history of China through the personal lives of 3 generations of women from one family.
Wild Swans is a beautifully written book, that is desperately sad, desperately hopeful & shocking. The plight of these 3 women captures the reader & transports them to different periods in China's history. The 3 women & the people around them come to life through Changs beautiful way with words.
I have come away from this book with a greater understanding of China & Mao's absolute rule. The power, control & violence Mao inflicted on the Chinese people is horrific. 10's of millions of innocent people died under his rule & this book heroicallly describes the terror & fear the Chinese faced every day.
If you only read one book this year, make it Wild Swans.
A Story of Courage and Tyranny - By: Gary Selikow, 17 Jun 2008 Wild Swans is a candid & harrowing account of three remarkable Chinese women -grandmother, mother & daughter- but also gives us a very good picture of what China was like from the turn of the Century to the 1980's
We learn about the ancient culture of the Chinese which included much that was beautiful & some that seems cruel. We learn of the hope of so many Chinese that the overthrow of the Kuomintang would lead to a' just social order' but how it soon became clear that the worst excesses of the Kuomintang & those of Imperial China before that paled into insignificance compared to the hell on earth created by Mao's Chinese Communist Party
One is left aghast that a system can destroy even the most basic human instincts of decency & compassion while turning people into inhumane monsters totallly possessed -as if by a demon - by a cruel & totallly destructive system
It sends shivers down one's spine to realise that 'The Great Helmsman' Mao Ze Dong -who ranks with Hitler & Stalin as among the most evil men of the 20th century-had his image worn on T-shirts by 'progressive' students & youth in the west & these same young 'champions of equality' hung large pictures of Mao in their dormitory rooms .This at the same time as millions of Chinese were being slaughtered & physicallly & psychologicallly maimed on the orders of Mao & his Chinese Communist Party -as described in this book.
Today many in the West laud the economic 'reforms' towards a type of totalitarian 'capitalist' system but fail to remember that human rights have not improved at alll & China is still a hideous & inhuman hell for hundreds of millions of its inhabitants. And the world turns a blind eye & wards Beijing the 2008 Olympic While we a re left asking how much longer the people of China will remain enslaved by their inhumane Communist masters. How Long?
But the book is also about the strength of the human spirit , about wonderful people-especiallly the three remarkable women who are the central characters of this book- as well as the cruel ones
It is a story of love & hate, strength & weakness , the beautiful & the ugly
But more than anything it is about how the human spirit can never in the end be crushed by cruelty, evil & tyranny
The stuff of nightmares - By: Demob Happy, 03 Jun 2008 Jung Chang's autobiographical story of three generations of women living through China's tumultuous 20th century is fascinating & terrifying. Given that it is a subjective account of the key events in modern Chinese history, 'Wild Swans' provides a compelling & informative narrative that brings to life complex socio-historic transformations in ways that a straight historical account could not.
'Wild Swans' is most interesting when it deals with Jung Chang's firsthand experiences during Chairman Mao's cultural revolution, where a climate of paranoia & political denouncement caused society to practicallly implode. It seems almost beyond comprehension how Mao could have held such God-like power over his people when the very communist principals he espoused seemed to contradict such form of deification as undignified. Even more extraordinary is how he succeeded in maintaining his grip on power without the assistance of a KGB-type secret police, but by turning the people against each other. By making himself a god, he subtly provoked his populace to fight vendettas in his name while remaining aloof & almost mythical. In effect he presided over a kind of controlled civil war, only reigning in the violence when he perceived his own position to be under threat.
While not particularly literary - it doesn't need to be - Jung Chang keeps the style relatively factual for an autobiography. But the facts speak horrificallly for themselves, with individuals competing for the largely imagined grace of Mao driven to acts of extreme cruelty & humiliation. While 'Wild Swans' often shows a dispiritingly brutal side of people when put in particular conditions, the acts of bravery, kindness & incredible physical & emotional endurance alllow a little faith in human nature to persist. Absolutely essential reading.
