Five Spice Street by Can Xue (Yale University)
Five Spice Street is Chinese author Can Xue’s first full-length novel to be published in English. The story is told by an unnamed writer who also lives on Five Spice Street which is located in an unnamed city in China. The people of Five Spice Street, a three-mile long road, had always led ordinary lives until the mysterious Madame X moved into their community.
The first mystery the people of Five Spice Street speculates about is the age of Madam X. The unnamed narrator says, “One person’s guess is as good as another’s. There are at least twenty-eight points of view. At one extreme, she’s about fifty, at the other, she’s twenty-two”. Everybody believes they have the right answer but nobody can prove nor disprove the validity of their answers and her age still remains a mystery.
Madam X, along with her husband and son Little Bao, have moved to Five Spice Street and make a living selling peanuts. She does not realize how much her actions affect the people living on Five Spice Street. When a widow notices the coming and goings of a man named Mr. Q, the whole community speculates that they are having an affair and although Madam X and Mr. Q have not been caught in the act of “spare time recreation”, everybody has their own theory as to the truth of the matter.
Madam X does not care what others think about her. She goes on about her daily life selling peanuts and looking into her microscope when she’s not working. Some people believe she’s a witch. Others think she is a fraud. The actions of the residents of Five Spice Street can be compared to a type of small town mentality where newcomers are viewed with suspicion and hostility. They may appear to be friendly on the surface, but once the newcomer is out of their sight, gossip and hearsay are the order of the day.
Even the community cannot agree on who initiated the affair. This affair becomes the core of the story. People have meetings about it. Some say, Madam X and Mr. Q’s actions are demoralizing the neighborhood and something should be done about it while others secretly wish they could be more like Madam X.
Many critics have heaped praise on Can Xue’s work, citing her books as “avant-garde fiction”. I found her prose to be confusing with the story having no real plot. From the beginning of the book, the people of Five Spice Street seem to have nothing better to do than to gossip or denounce Madame X as a sorceress or witch and yet in the last chapter, they decide to elect her as the people’s representative. The narrative is confusing as the actions of the people.
In an interview with author Can Xue, she says, “In very deep layers, all of my books are autobiographical.” To the people who try to find meaning in her stories, she had this to say. “If a reader feels that this book is unreadable, then it’s quite clear that he’s not one of my readers”. I have nothing personal against Can Xue, but I am definitely not one of her readers! ~Ernie Hoyt