Ricardo

I wish I could like this book more. I was immediately drawn into the setting; WW2 in the neutral port city of Lisbon, Portugal. I was unfamiliar with that bit of history, and the book painted the picture of that period and location very well.

Unfortunately this book is really let down by the uninteresting main characters whose motives rarely make sense, and the terrible dialogue that occurs between them which is a shame as the novel has some great writing in between.

I didn't buy Iris and Edwards relationship, I didnt buy Edward as a character, and I couldn't understand Petes obsession with him. Everytime the two talked I wanted Edwards dull, pretentious conversation to be over, yet Pete was yearning for him... why? All the while Julia was either being stroppy or playing solitaire...

The Noodle Maker is a collection of stories about the poor, working people of a recently revolutionised China told through the eyes of a professional writer who has been tasked with writing propoganda, but can only get himself to recount stories to his friend, a professional blood donor.


The loosely conmected stories he tells are about people familiar to him and the tales he imagines for them are often very bleak, and graphic. The hypocrisies of the CCP are put in front of us and their control across society is made clear, but I never felt that the writers thoughts on this system were critical enough to explain away the brutal nature of most of the people in these stories and how they found themselves to be like this.


There were some standout moments. The story about the mother and son who own a crematorium was interesting, but for me, the stories didn't connect in any meaningful way and the way the women were written was truly awful. I'm not sure if it was meant to be a reflection of Chinese society at the time, the professional writers feelings or the Author's actual beliefs on how women think and act, but a lot of this book did not make for enjoyable reading.

The story of Jakes current life as a sheep farmer on a British island is written as a mystery with the main question being; who (or what) is killing the sheep on her farm? But the story of Jakes past (told in a reverse chronological order) reveals the true mystery to be; What led Jake to leave Australia and live a solitary life on an island?

The book is well paced and I found myself reading page after page expecting to uncover more a mystery, but unfortunately what I found were two stories that didn't do enough to justify their connection. I did enjoy some of the writing, although a lot of the Australian scenes fell into some very heavy handed “ocker Australian” tropes.

Some really evocative language, but this book is essentially one long, rambly monologue from a character who wants to ask an old friend a question he himself has already answered. I couldn't decide if he knew what question he really wanted to ask, or if he knew what sort of answer he would have liked to hear. Perhaps he didn't either.