The Invisibility Cloak

August 1, 2016
Fei’s first novel to be translated into English, a slight tale about a hapless audiophile, is shot through with an eerie melody. The down-on-his luck protagonist, who constructs bespoke audio systems for Beijing’s elite, is divorced from his unfaithful wife and beset by a manipulative sister scheming to evict him. He stoically endures these financial and domestic troubles but inwardly seethes with Dostoyevskian rage. Disdainful of his pretentious, pontificating clients and a ruthlessly competitive society that has seen the “deliberate humiliation of the craftsmen,” the hero finds sanctuary in the connoisseurship of his artistically crafted sound equipment and the beautiful strains of music they emit: “I felt as if I had no business enjoying this luxury in such a polluted, chaotic world.” His specialized knowledge confers on him “an illusion of hiding in the quietest corner of the deepest place on earth,” that is, a kind of pleasurable invisibility. When his only friend sets him up with a sinister client looking to buy the “highest-quality sound system in the world,” the craftsman agrees to the immersive project, which introduces him into a shadowy, inscrutable world and a shrouded woman as invisible as he is. Fei, who won the 2015 Mao Dun Literature Prize, is content to let certain mysteries linger, perhaps sharing with his protagonist the belief that “the best attributes of anyone or anything usually reside on the surface.” The novel’s relentlessly flat tone could frustrate, but amplification isn’t always necessary to produce a memorable effect.

This slim comic novel, the first by acclaimed Chinese author Ge Fei to be translated into English, follows the travails of a likable loser trying to stay afloat--financially and emotionally--in contemporary Beijing.Cui builds tube amplifiers for a living. In the mid-1990s, during a boom in serious music interest in Beijing, Cui did well enough to buy a two-bedroom apartment and marry his girlfriend, Yufen. Four years later Beijing's interest in serious music has died out and Cui is struggling financially. Worse, his mother's warning that Yufen was "a little too easy-come-easy-go" has proven prophetic: recently, around the time of his mother's death, Yufen "sweetly" asked for a divorce because she'd become involved with a man from her office. Cui let her have the apartment while he kept a valuable set of Autograph speakers. He now lives in his older sister's apartment, but she and her husband, who moved into his mother's house, want him out ASAP. Ge Fei's depiction of Beijing life is cynical--from the pompous professor who insists Cui install only the best sound system but knows nothing about music; to Cui's manipulative sister; to his friend Jiang Songping, a glad-handing factory owner who patronizingly gives Cui Tommy Hilfiger shirts and helps him "fish" for clients among his wealthy acquaintances in order to show off his "highbrow tastes"; to the general graft and corruption apparent in the author's descriptions of recently built apartment complexes. And it would be easy for a cynic to consider Cui a sucker for helping Yufen's new husband out of a jam or trusting a mobster's promise to send his payment after Cui installs his most valuable sound system. But page by page, Cui lives by his own moral compass until readers find themselves rooting for this philosophical Everyman to overcome every setback Ge Fei throws his way.The plot may be slight, but the author packs in wit, social commentary, and an emotional depth that will lift the reader's spirits like few recent books. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.