The Incarnations

Reluctant to review Susan Barker’s The Incarnations: A Novel without knowing another of her three publications. This work is so laden with negativity regarding China in all its covered historical periods that I wondered whether it flows from her generic mode of story telling or just what the subject had promoted in her artistic rendering? On completion of the story comes a biographical note: “Susan Barker grew up in East London. While writing The Incarnations she spent several years living in Beijing, researching ancient and modern China. She currently lives in London.”

Beijing, a city 20 million plus population capital of a country determined to emerge from poverty and backwardness to the forefront of world power, overladen with immense bureaucracy and its underlings and an atmosphere human and ecological thick and unhealthy. Spending several years in Beijing with the novel’s focal character a taxi driver and his incarnations, one could fester into negativity without difficulty. Readers beware, the land is not as hopelessly ugly and brutal as Barker makes it, or as depraved.

Wading into the story, after a while I became reluctant to turn the page fearful of what gore and depravity lie ahead; I started to just skim forward for it does carry interest immersed in dark shadows. The last chapter has a redeeming quality that lifts and focuses the tale so it gains some clarity and purpose.
It’s a bit of a stretch for the editors to claim Barker spent several years … researching ancient and modern China, her Emperors Taizong and Jiajing for example are real but easily available and her take on the Chinese is Beijing flavored but personal. Makes a story no doubt, but uneven in delivery. And hardly historical.

The Incarnations is quite an eclectic book drawn, as it is, from various periods in China's history ranging from seventh century Imperial China right up to the relatively recent Cultural Revolution in the 1960s under the auspices of Mao Zedong. In a setting just before the Beijing Olympics, the main protagonist is taxi driver Wang, married with a young daughter who is exceedingly sceptical when someone apparently unknown to him gradually reveals his previous incarnations. Naturally the incarnations are colourful and usually violent - it would not make much of a story if he had previously been a simple, toiling peasant who died in his bed!

Somewhat against the odds I thought this mix worked rather well. The author is a good story teller and is able to set her scenes quickly and effectively. Of course the reader either has to believe in reincarnation or be able to suspend disbelief from the word go. However the latter would apply to many books and that does not make them any the less enjoyable. There are the odd moments of humour too - one that sticks in my mind was when it was revealed that Wang's wife, Yodi, was initially incarnated as a dog flea and then, clearly on a progression, became a tapeworm in the gut of a cow. Not much sympathetic treatment from the author there!

Overall I found this to be an enjoyable book which moves seamlessly between different time periods and which has clearly been well researched.

This book was very interesting and I enjoyed most of the chapters about the historical periods. It annoyed me, however, that most of the stories centered around sex which wasn't mentioned in the book description or any reviews. I'm no prude and wasn't offended. I was bored and would not have bought the book of I had known that was the main subject. I found a lot of the stories to be too drawn out as well, and they didn't hold my attention. In the end, I wanted to know who was writing the letters so I just skipped to the last couple of chapters to find out.

The concept of selecting periods of Chinese history intertwined with incarnations to tell the story is a neat concept. The big let-down is the inability to empathize with any of the characters in a meaningful way because the author is attempting to hop to yet another period to fulfill the novel's premise. Worse all the characters are unremitingly grim without any redeeming traits. Felt quite depressed after reading it to conclusion. D+ at best.

“My undertaking, as biographer of your past, is not one I take lightly. I work hard for your enlightenment. I am patient, diligent and devoted to the role.”

It is Beijing 2007, one year before China hosts the Olympic Games. Thirty one year old Wang Yu drives one of the 66,000 taxis that clog up the city of Beijing having dropped out of university some ten years previously.
Wang Yu is married to his wife of nine years Yida and has an eight year old daughter, Echo. Wang Yu’s daughter’s name is prescient as he finds himself being stalked by someone who call themselves ‘his biographer’, leaving letters behind the visor of his taxi relating stories of Wang Yu’s past lives, incarnations, echoes of the past.
The biographer’s presence and the stories told in the letters un-nerve Wang Yu and he believes they are being written by Zeng Yan a man he had a passionate affair with when incarcerated in a mental institution having suffered a breakdown after suffering domestic abuse and the death of his mother while at university.
Wang Yu’s life begins to unravel as the past of his present life and his six past incarnations written by the biographer both implode and explode what he thought he knew and what he believed to be the true nature of his existence.

“To scatter beams of light on the darkness of your unknown past is my duty. For to have lived six times, but to only know your latest incarnation, is to only know one-sixth of who you are. To be only one-sixth alive.”

In what is a bleak, dark and haunting novel Susan Barker remarkably manages to keep the novel light but not frothy, at times amusing but not facetious. The author has an assured, confident style that also oozes an air of a well-researched subject matter. The biographer’s stories take us from the Tang Dynasty, 632 AD where we learn that the biographer is the daughter of an incestuous rape of a sister through the capture of the city of Zhongdu by Genghis Khan’s Mongolian up to China’s years of the Cultural Revolution. Not only are the stories fascinating but also enlightening but never cross the line into didacticism.
Unfortunately, the fascinating and enlightening stories of Wang Yu’s past lives are also its Achilles heel. The chapters that recount the present life of Wang Yu are dry and less involving and this reader found himself doing all he could to not skip the present day chapters and search for the next letter about his past incarnations. That is not to say that the present day chapters are not well written but there is a bloated, repetitiveness about these chapters that occasionally slow the plot and storyline down and result in the novel feeling less tight and in need of an astute editorial cohesiveness.
Susan Barker takes us through 1500 years of China’s history. The recent past also haunts the novel with reference to Tiananmen Square by a patient at the mental institution who attempted to gain democratic freedom for his countrymen while Wang Yu speaks of his mother telling him of how Chairman Mao had thousands of workers build an underground tunnel underneath Tiananmen Square to allow an escape to freedom during the era of nuclear threat.
Politics and the hypocritical nature of western democracy is also referenced though it is painted in rather broad and obvious strokes. While watching ‘Free Tibet’ British protestors during the torch relay in London on their laptop, Yida says;

“Look at how they invaded and bombed Iraq and Afghanistan, and they think they can shout at us about Tibet. They know nothing about Tibet. Tibetans were illiterate, dirty and backwards before China developed the region.”

The author is not above pointing out the humour in the irrational nature of life in China. During the reign of Chairman Mao, the Red Guards, “change the traffic light system, so revolutionary red means ‘go’ and green means ‘stop’. The inevitable accidents occur and the victims are persecuted for, “clinging to the Old Culture and the Old Ways of Thinking.” One of the biographer’s stories tells of Wang Yu’s early incarnations being married to a chicken that is believed to possess the spirit of a prosperous family’s dead son. When she learns that she is to be ‘sacrificed’ the morning after the ‘wedding’ she flees the area taking the chicken with her. Getting fed up with the squirming she wrings the chicken’s neck and finds herself, “Widowed at the age of thirteen”. She later roasts and eats the chicken.
Susan Barker is the progeny of a Chinese Malaysian mother and an English father. She spent several years in Beijing researching ancient and modern China. The years of research shines brightly throughout the novel helping light up the novel as a very worthy contender for any reader’s bookshelf. If one can forgive the occasionally slow nature of the novel and its tendency to repeat itself and crowbar in superfluous political commentary then the reader will be rewarded with a fascinating and erudite story that basks in the history of an inscrutable country.

First Line – “Every night I wake from dreaming.”

Memorable Line – “I tally the former incarnations as a wood cutter counts rings within a tree. I date the soul as a Geiger counter dates carbon.”

No’ of Pages – 384
Sex Scenes – Yes
Profanity – Yes
Genre – Fiction.

I started reading this book with much enthusiasm and interest. However I became thoroughly sick of the 1000 years of pitiless cruelty and depravity depicted in this book. That view was not helped by this book following on from The History of the Boxer Rebellion. The idea of reincarnations to time travel through 1000 years of Chinese history is certainly clever but the huge numbers of characters meant few were met in depth. I began to wonder if the sub title of this book is 1000 shades of Grey or the Readers Digest history of China.

As an author whose written about China myself, a long-term student of its literary history, and a freakin' resident for the last decade, I'm kind of hopping around like a giddy little newsboy street urchin in talking about this book. The Incarnations is the SINGLE BEST compilation of English language words, focusing on China, written in the last decade. Fiction, non-fiction, snarky journalism, whatever. But it's an insult to the book to make that claim, because it's not a "China book." It's a fascinating, beautifully written, poetic and intensely powerful story that belongs not on "Asia Interest" shelves, but beside Borges and Garcia-Marquez. Readers of Salman Rushdie will adore this book. Read it. For God's sake, read it! It's the book I'm going to give to friends for the rest of my life when they ask "Why care about China?"

To truly live, you must understand where you come from.

Susan Barker’s The Incarnations starts in Beijing in the summer of 2008. A letter is left in a cab driven by a nebbish, unassuming driver named Wang Jun. Wang lives a relatively quiet and ordinary life with his wife Yida and daughter Echo. The letter soon changes everything for Wang, quickly ensnaring him in messy cat and mouse game as he tries to figure out the identity of his stalker.

More letters come. The author makes a bold claim: He/she is someone who has known Wang for centuries, through past lives, and claims a duty to inform him. “To have lived six times, but to know only your latest incarnation, is to know only one-sixth of who you are.”

The novel cycles through each incarnation—Wang as a eunuch, a slave during the Mongolian invasion, a concubine during the Ming Dynasty, a Tanka fisherboy during the rise of British colonialism, and a student during the Cultural Revolution. There’s a twist though. The letter writer isn’t just writing a straight-up biography. It’s a personal history of a much different sort, more confessional than historical, and it is soon revealed that the letter writer shares a deep, complex, and very twisted bond with Wang, one that’s scarred by violence, lust, incest, and murder.

Barker writes these two lives as if they are twined souls, soul mates, but quickly strips the romanticism of that idea and makes it a raw, elemental bond—one that is filtered through a complicated amalgam of longing and rejection. It is a poisonous dance—victim/exploiter. Wang Jun’s lives are characterized by abuse, treachery, rage, jealousy—the basest, most reckless, and most damaging of human emotions. The Incarnations feels like tilt-a-whirl of these dark impulses and how they can sabotage relationships.

As Wang Jun learns about his past lives, we are also embroiled in his present. The letters disturb him to the core and seem to precipitate an unraveling in his personal life, revealing cracks and weaknesses in his relationships to his father, stepmother, wife, and daughter. We learn about Wang’s troubled past. An underachieving college dropout, son of a wealthy Communist Party official, troubled marriage, brewing, tortured conflicts about his sexuality. Wang is marred and haunted by a history of mental instability, a hateful relationship with his abusive father, and guilt over his mother’s death.

The way Barker weaves these realities together, past and present, is seamlessly done. Barker could have left this as a series of chopped-up tales, and while the novel does read sometimes like a collection of disparate exotic, rococo short stories, Barker ties everything together in the end.

The Incarnations is remarkable for its storytelling and detail. You can tell Barker did incredible research for this. As these tortuous lives unfold, we are simultaneously treated to the vast, rich scope of China’s past and present. What readers get is a compelling, imaginative romp through history. I was absolutely entranced and pulled in as I read.

Fair warning: The lives of Wang Jun are painful and heartbreaking. The many incidences of savagery and betrayal are written with unforgiving detail. The bleakness is unrelenting, though oddly never wearisome because Barker writes with such empathy for her characters. But don’t look for happy endings in any of the six lives. It’s pretty obvious that being an incarnate is more a cruel curse than a blessing. And there is never any redemption in subsequent lives, although there is always the hope. Sadly, kindness and altruism rarely pay off. Kill or be killed seems to be the moral rule in this universe. “Being born into this world is hell,” Wang Jun’s mother teaches him as a child. “You will be crushed with countless millions all your life long.”

Part of the mesmerizing snare of The Incarnations is the fundamental mystery: Who is writing the letters? Knowing his dysfunctional past, can we trust Wang and his suspicions? Is his wife right about him all along? Is it really all in his head? The truth is only revealed in the last twenty or so pages. I loved the bittersweet finale and revelation, which tied together the layers of narrative nicely and brought everything full circle. And not only do we learn the truth about Wang and the letter writer but also a third party twist that will surprise you and make your heart ache.

The Incarnations is ultimately about the heavy burdens of a past weighed down by guilt and regret, but also how knowing/acknowledging that past can be the way out. With the letters and revelations, perhaps the cycle of misery can be broken.

“A thousand years of obsession and betrayal,” says author Adam Johnson about this intricately plotted tale, a finalist for the 2015 Kirkus prize for fiction. Author Barker has managed to create a multitude of compelling plots, drawing inspiration from the convoluted and violent history of China, all within one overarching framework.
The premise is that present-day Beijing taxi driver Wang is being watched by a first-person observer, who refers to the two of them as “you” and “I.” The narrator writes him a series of letters that purport to recount the driver’s previous lives—thus, the book’s title. “As biographer of our past lives, I recount the ways we have known each other. The times we were friends and the times we were enemies.” Sometimes they were men, sometimes women, sometimes related, sometimes not, first one was older, then the other. They circle each other through time like dragons.
After each foray into the past, the narration returns briefly to the present and the insightful, often humorous portrayals of the puzzled driver, his wife and young daughter Echo, his stubborn father and seductive stepmother, and an old flame he’s reluctantly rekindled. The letters are too bizarre and at times too shameful to share, and they contribute in some part to deteriorating relations between Wang and his current contemporaries. So consumed by the past, he’s unable to see the present clearly.
Some of these past lives were plenty brutal too, especially the one where “you” were a beautiful young concubine in the court of a cruel and debauched emperor, and “I” an older concubine who thought she’d earned a place of respect. Perhaps because it was closest to our own time and can be viewed through a modern lens, the section that takes place during the Cultural Revolution was especially poignant.
Fascinated by historical China as I am, I enjoyed the novel’s subject and setting, as well as the high quality of its writing and its clever plot and subject matter. Even at the end, it had surprises in store.

The lives in Susan Barker’s THE INCARNATIONS are ones that have existed a long time ago. Surreal and intimate, and brutal in their realism, they are really one life and one story --- one incarnated soul.

It’s 2008, and Beijing is set to host the Olympics. At its core, the city moves with the exhaust fumes from heavy trucks. Home to roughly 11 million, it is a congested, polluted landscape with an underground near Tiananmen filled with neon lights, restaurants, sexually explicit billboards, workmen cooking rice in gas rings, and constant movement. The people are always packed in, and the rain, dust and trade of the city are a perpetual fixture.

As a cab driver, Wang Jun is a silent observer. His customers treat him like a machine, hardly taking note of him. He hears conversations from young girls who have lost their virginity, investment bankers speaking about their profits, and witnesses prostitution daily. He goes through his 12-hour shift internalizing all these individuals. A quiet soul, he longs for transcendence --- his irony being his daily cab rides. He drives all around Bejing, but in essence he remains confined.

During one drive, Wang finds a mysterious letter in his cab; its initial contents are unknown, and, despite his best efforts, he can’t find the writer. The police don’t consider it a crime, and his co-workers state that they have nothing to do with it. Days later, he receives a second letter: “Once you were a Red Guard, rampaging through Beijing….” the letter reads, “intent on destroying the Old culture….months later I aided and abetted your suicide….but to know only your latest incarnation is to be only one-sixth alive.”

It is in the third letter Wang receives where THE INCARNATIONS becomes worth reading. Barker, who is as talented a contemporary author as I’ve read, shows that she may have much in common with writers like Italo Calvino and even fantasy authors like George R.R. Martin. Her ability to evoke a sense of place for an old country combined with mythic storytelling creates a sense of realism --- a sense of wonder and adventure amidst harsh places, where the brutish nature of conquerors and kings ravages the lives of slaves, concubines and eunuchs.

While these past lives are a highlight, equally as engaging is Wang’s own past. His birth mother died at the age of 14 while drowning in a river. When he first gets to know Lin Hong, his stepmother, he is cold and distant towards her. After his father catches the two of them in bed together, he is sent off to an asylum. He never goes back to school and instead becomes a cab driver. Barker adds another interesting facet throughout the book, blurring not just the line of sexuality but of family and relationships as well.

Perhaps the book’s only true flaw is its scope. The story itself is the incarnation of one soul over many periods of time --- that of Wang and the writer of the letters, his soulmate. Ultimately, we are reading about the betrayal and loss of that bond over and over --- in different periods of time and in slightly different settings. Although strong, well-rounded and mythic tales, they are a strange comforting dream with a very real underlying darkness. It is a world worthy of the soul’s exploration.

Reviewed by Stephen Febick

Susan Barker's imaginative fictional book Incarnations is indeed wizardly and exceedingly erudite in its use of vocabulary.
The reader learns at the beginning of the book about a first incarnation which amazingly full circles to the ending in a ancestral time travel way that is both mind-shattering and understandable.

This is a gripping read! Indeed, the main character, Wang Jun, and his blood line have an ancestral karmic path strewn with indignities, atrocities, witchcraft, and victimization; this family line has endured lives from peasant to palatial, inhabiting a dizzying array of entities and nary an incarnation comes and goes without its brutal barbarism.

Wang Jun in this life has suffered indignities and will continue to do so throughout this book as his emotional inner conflict is revealed and broadens
as he begins to receive unsolicited letters detailing information from someone unseen who identifies as his soulmate who knows the history of all that has been about his soul.

The book uses flashbacks to Wang's earliest memories in this life and his past lives revealing to us a man possibly repaying karma
in this lifetime, ancestral karma, as he struggles to make sense and deal with what is happening to him in this incarnation.

This is not your happy dance book; it is an edgy book teasing and taunting the reader using Chinese folklore, superstitions, Maoist history,
and vividly portraying the effect on a human being when stalked and inundated with searing details of the heinousness and endured torture of former lives as detailed in the mysterious letters he continuously receives, each of which drives him a bit closer to irrationality and hopelessness.

Wang Jun’s mother tells him that “being born into this world is hell” and that he will be “crushed with countless millions all your life long.” His father tells him, “Like mother, like son.” Who is Wang Jun? Even Wang Jun doesn’t know the answer. He is the product of a horrific childhood and, perhaps, of difficult lives that he experienced in earlier incarnations.

When taxi driver Wang Jun finds a letter above the visor in his taxi from a person who claims to be his soulmate, he complains to the police about a stalker. Subsequent letters tell Wang about the soulmate’s past incarnations, all involving relationships with someone who is presumably Wang, although in past lives Wang was not always a male. In between letters, we learn about Wang’s marriage, his child and his childhood, his confinement in a mental health institution and the friend who caused him to question his sexual identity. We later watch Wang confront a moral crisis as he tries to understand his needs and desires.

The background is China just before the Olympic Games, when the longstanding practice of spitting on the sidewalk drew government fines and meager efforts were made to quash obvious corruption. The clash between a controlling government and out-of-control free enterprise is depicted in small details that create a convincing setting.

The stories from the past draw upon key moments in Chinese history from the seventh century to the twentieth. Some are the stuff of myth and legend. Others have a more realistic feel, although even those are infused with spirits and visions. They are all fascinating, but the segment that takes place during Mao’s Cultural Revolution is the most affecting. It is a captivating piece of writing.

Back in the present, much of the story is driven by Wang’s assumptions about the identity of the letter writer, the impact of the letters on Wang, and the unfortunate actions he takes in response to them. That gives the novel the flavor of a mystery or a story of psychological suspense. There are also stories of unconventional relationships scattered through the novel, although they involve tragic love more than giddy romance.

The letter writer’s actual identity (at least, the most recent one) is surprising to both the reader and to Wang. Its revelation forces a reinterpretation of the earlier letters. The novel’s ending is powerful and unexpected. The Incarnations is, in short, a skillful tale that combines tragedy and humor, history and modernity, revealing the darkness and richness of China and the enduring nature of the human spirit -- even when the human has no desire to endure.

After reading the reviews for Barker's novel (NYT Books Review and Kirkus, which gave Barker a "star" for Incarnations) I quickly ran up and purchased a copy the first day it "hit the shelves" (I wanted to purchase it via the store, but I was too late to ensure delivery the day it was released).

I started reading the novel on Sunday and I'm about 250 pages into it and absolutely in love with "The Incarnations" -- it's addicting! With that said, when I first started reading the book, I found myself frustrated and a tad bored -- I almost put the novel down around page 20, but I'm SO glad I didn't! Once the writer of the "letters" to Driver Wang offered the first retelling of one of Wang's past lives, I was hooked! This novel is not at all what I expected, however, it is rich in history, love, passion, folklore, and offers a peephole to modern Chinese life that is extraordinarily beautiful.

The structure of the novel is also worth commenting on. Told predominantly from the perspective of the letter writer (with the exception of the chapters focused on Wang's current "life"), the book offers a fascinating glimpse into the mind of the obsessed. Barker's story is so well written that you can literally visualize the author of the letters to Wang in a deep state of concentration at his/her desk as they are penned. The alternating chapters -- Wang's current life, letters from author, and author's retelling of past lives -- provide a tour-de-force that I haven't been treated to in some time.

Susan Barker's newest novel is not merely a "novel," but rather it is a gift to modern literature. Barker reminds us that the best days of the novel are not behind, but rather in front of us as we discover new and imaginative ways by which to tell stories that are engaging, enriching, and and beautiful in how they unfold and inform us.

Barker tackles China's past and present in a clever and imminently read-able manner that I found interesting and for the most part an enjoyable novel. The title pretty says it all as she uses the idea of incarnations to pull back not just how the China of today (well 2007) and the main character got to where it is but also a sense of where it might want to go as well as where Wang Yu, the main character himself wants to go. Does he even know or understand? Does China? That is what I think is at the heart of Barker's novel here.

And she captures this so well. With a candid often brutal but always interested look at events that shape a 'soul' (nation), Barker is unflinching in her regard at China's past and at the present and the life Wang Yu has created for himself as well as the one(s) he has set aside through various choices and actions.

The Incarnations is a wonderful look at China through fiction that is fresh in many ways, at least for me. I found it had accessible sensibility in its portrayal that neither tried to emphasis the uniqueness of China (or worse the almost ubiquitous 'inscrutable to outsiders' approach) at the expense of being something an outsider to that nation/society could relate to and identify with on a simpler and yet more profound level. Wang Yu is easily a character to draw in and hold the reader. As are the various looks back to the events that shape so much of the world Barker takes the reader into.

Wang is a taxi driver in Beijing, China. His days are spent ferrying nameless individuals from one end of the city to the other. In the years he has spent driving he has never paid much attention to his passengers, until one day a mysterious letter appears in his taxi and changes everything.

The letter claims to be from Wang’s soulmate and is the first in a series, each one telling of their previous past lives together. Though they seem to appear out of thin air, Wang soon believes he is being watched and believes he knows who the mysterious author is. Also with each letter, Wang knows the author is getting closer to him and to his family.

The Incarnations was another one of those books that I picked up on a whim because the blurb on the back sounded interesting, and once more dear reader I am so glad I did.

In the story we are introduced to Wang, a taxi driver in Beijing; a man who believes himself happy with a wife and daughter. A man who has a strained relationship with his father and step-mother; but who, like many, try to make the best of what he has. That is until the first letter arrives and Wang is taken on a path he did not wish to go down.

It is clearly evident that Barke did her research for not only the letters of the past but for the modern day story as well. The Beijing of 2008 is gearing up for the Olympics and the changes that occur to the city during that time weave throughout the story, mimicking the changes that occur to Wang and his family with each of the letters. The tales written in the letters also have this thread woven throughout, the individuals each going through changes whether for their benefit or not.

What I found truly heart-breaking though was the ending. Given the recurrent nature of each of the tales, dealing with death and rebirth, there really wasn’t any other way for the book to end. It was the path there that was truly hurtful for while Wang believed he knew the truth, he couldn’t have been further from it.

I found The Incarnations to be an absolutely fascinating read. The threads of the past and present and potential future were woven together so well. It is no wonder this book was up for so many different awards. Readers who enjoy novels set in China, whether past or present, should definitely give this one a try. I don’t think they’ll be sorry in the least.

A story of obsession and betrayal, as one critic aptly put it, set in China in both contemporary and historical eras. The best thing about this book is its structure, which is not fully revealed until the end. The book held my interest, but with its unappealing and uninteresting characters, and prose which is fine but unexceptional, the book has only mediocre value as either literature or entertainment. One chapter occurs during China’s cultural revolution, and while I was familiar with what went on then, Barker has an original take with quiet emotion as well as brutality; this chapter was the highlight of the novel, and could be excerpted and read as a very good short story.

SPOILER ALERT. Was the child Echo the best choice as the third, most brutal time traveler? I guess you couldn’t choose the grandfather unless you gave him a role in the cultural revolution chapter.

Many compare The Incarnations to David Mitchell which I don't think is fair to be honest. I don't like it when an author, particularly a new one, is categorized as being like another. No, this is not a David Mitchell novel. It lacks Mitchell's plot complexity but that doesn't mean it's not worth reading on its own merits. I enjoyed this more than I expected and I was captivated throughout. When considering a premise of reincarnation I assumed that the two soul mates in this book would be lovers throughout time and their reunions could be classified as good fodder for romance novels but I was completely wrong! Susan Barker uses reincarnation to highlight the brutality of one thousand years of Chinese history. The two soul mates are more adversarial than friendly and there is often betrayal, angst, and disloyalty in their stories. A lot of blood has been spilled on China throughout the ages: The Tang Dynasty, The Invasion of Genghis Khan, The Opium Wars, and The Cultural Revolution. Taxi cab driver Wang in Beijing circa 2008 was a great character. He was the glue that kept all the narratives tied together. The ending floored me! I did not see that happening. Wow.

3.5 stars
The Incarnations by Susan Baker is a beautifully written, fascinating story about two reincarnated souls that have been connected for a thousand years. I was immediately interested in reading this for two reasons: I’ve always loved the idea of reincarnation and it’s about Chinese history and folklore.

I like to go into novels without knowing too much of the plot so I can form my own opinions about them and not be spoiled. This novel is very different than what I originally thought it was going to be about. I thought this was going to be a love story with star-crossed lovers finding each other again and again throughout their many lives. I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that was not the case here.

The letters Wang receives are in an eerily omniscient voice. The author of the letters is obsessed with Wang’s soul and tells the stories of his past lives. There are stories of betrayal, infatuation, and suffering… mostly obsession and suffering.

I really wanted to give this 4 stars. The main reason I took half a star away is because of the length. Although this novel isn’t ridiculously long, I found the parts about Wang’s current life to be lacking. I was bored with them and really wanted to get more about these letters and mysterious person.

The ending wrapped up the story nicely with a few more surprises. Everything was explained and I was grateful because I didn’t think it would be.

The Incarnations-By Susan Barker
Wow, what a wonderful novel this is.
Susan Barker is an English author with a Chinese Malay mother and a British father. She lived in Beijing for a year to better describe it in this novel. Now that is dedication and the result is amazing.
I do not want to give away the fascinating stories that weave this novel, suffice to say that you are torn between reading fast and let it linger and once you finish it you are enchanted, seduced, saddened it ended and craving for more.

This book really reminded me of a coherent “Cłoud Atlas” -- only with lots of graphic sexuality. There are no futuristic, sci-fi parts but each of the incarnation-stories are much more interesting! My major complaint is the ending; it is disappointing, lazy, and lackluster. I thought the author was gearing up for something, but instead she just went for an easy conclusion. [Specific rating: 3.5+ / 5 stars]

A perfect blend of mystery, contemporary fiction, and historical fiction done in a very dark and intense way that I can’t say I’ve read before. The story begins with Wang, a taxi driver who starts to receive letters from someone who must be watching him. TOTALLY normal for a thriller type book–except it’s someone claiming to be Wang’s soulmate and proceeds to tell him, through letters left in frightening ways, about his previous lives and their very different relationships in them. Naturally this starts causing havoc in his current life and on his mental state. Oh, and did I mention this book has eunuchs? It does. Eunuchs. (I just wanted to get to say it a second time.)

Many years ago, when we still listened to music on record players, my father returned from a trip to China with a single – the sleeve of which depicted a handsome couple beneath an English translation: ‘I HATE YOU DEEPLY.’

So is it mistranslation or a true description of the complexity of love? The Incarnations – a jewel of a book – is narrated through a series of letters to Wang Jun – a Beijing taxi driver. His mysterious and unwelcome correspondent claims to be his soul mate, recounting in extravagant detail, their encounters over a thousand years of Chinese history.

Never in fiction have soul mates treated one another so horribly. Their celestial connection is less blessing and more curse. Linked through circumstance or biology, in each incarnation they reject and break one another’s hearts in the most awful ways imaginable. If cosmic love is the magnet that draws these two souls together, then it’s a pessimistic depiction of earthly life and the human condition. Life sure is suffering in these incarnations. A romance this is not.

From the court of the bored and sadistic emperor Jiajing through the Opium Wars, the Maoist regime’s Anti-Capitalist School for Revolutionary Girls, and on to the polluted and congested roads of a bleak pre-Olympics Beijing, these soul mates are victims of a nation reinventing itself, lurching from one form of collective insanity to another. Unable in this cycle of torment to summon the willpower to transcend their misery, again and again, they yield to their darkest sides, betray themselves and each other.

Brilliant as it is, it’s not a cheery book. The humour, when it comes is grim – a product of wry observations and brutal depictions of regimes, ideologies and attitudes so twisted they seem at times to border on farce. Yet it’s these delicious descriptions of Chinese history and madness of the times and manner in which the soul mates reincarnate and reunite that hooked me. After all, history is always far more engaging when written from a subjective perspective. And the turmoils of this pair of entwined, deeply dysfunctional souls deliver an unnerving intimacy. On top of this, Susan Barker’s writing is so visceral and evocative it’s like gorging on a rich meal. You know in the end it’s going to make you miserable, but you just can’t stop.

Barker is very gifted with description and characterization, but I thought that the violence and sexual thread in the majority of the incarnations to be repetitive. It was a let down that Wang Jun did not get to realize that it was his mother who had been the letter writer. I also thought it was a bit much to give the letters and the stories to an 8 year old girl to read at the end. The grandmother alluded to the fact that she was the incarnations of the cruel and horrid people in the past lives(the Sorcerous, the battle faced Mongol, the sadistic Emperor and the cruel Red Guard). How depressing and what is she going to end up in the current incarnation to match those horrific characters from her past?

This fascinating book is about the reincarnations of two souls through hundreds of years of Chinese history. Wang Jun, married, living a quiet life as a Beijing taxi driver, keeps receiving mysterious letters that describe the past lives of him and his “soulmate”. It’s weird, sad, gripping, and unlike anything I’ve read before or since. Incredibly memorable read.

Susan Barker is a talented writer and I certainly learned a lot about Chinese history but the story is unrelentingly grim and cruel. There are few if any sympathetic characters. China has much brutality in its history but also beauty in its literature, landscape and culture. We see none of that in this ambitious novel, only the ugly, in this tale of vicious, vengeful reincarnated souls. I would not recommend it.

Wow, this book moves fast snd kept my attention. Some descriptions in the "historic chapters" were so vidvid and grotesque, it was hard to get through. But I give high marks for the author's ability to be vividly descriptive to the point you feel like you are living inside that scene. Extremely talented author!