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    The Incarnations: A Novel
    The Incarnations: A Novel
    The Incarnations: A Novel
    Audiobook14 hours

    The Incarnations: A Novel

    Written by Susan Barker

    Narrated by Timo Chen and Joy Osmanski

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    New York Times Notable Book of 2015
    Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction Book of 2015
    Finalist for the 2015 Kirkus Prize for Fiction
    Winner of a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize

    Hailed by The New York Times for its “wildly ambitious...dazzling use of language” and “mesmerizing storytelling,” The Incarnations is a “brilliant, mind-expanding, and wildly original novel” (Chris Cleave) about a Beijing taxi driver whose past incarnations over one thousand years haunt him through searing letters sent by his mysterious soulmate.

    Who are you? you must be wondering. I am your soulmate, your old friend, and I have come back to this city of sixteen million in search of you.

    So begins the first letter that falls into Wang’s lap as he flips down the visor in his taxi. The letters that follow are filled with the stories of Wang’s previous lives—from escaping a marriage to a spirit bride, to being a slave on the run from Genghis Khan, to living as a fisherman during the Opium Wars, and being a teenager on the Red Guard during the cultural revolution—bound to his mysterious “soulmate,” spanning one thousand years of betrayal and intrigue.

    As the letters continue to appear seemingly out of thin air, Wang becomes convinced that someone is watching him—someone who claims to have known him for over a century. And with each letter, Wang feels the watcher growing closer and closer…

    Seamlessly weaving Chinese folklore, history, literary classics, and the notion of reincarnation, this is a taut and gripping novel that reveals the cyclical nature of history as it hints that the past is never truly settled.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateAug 18, 2015
    ISBN9781442387034
    Author

    Susan Barker

    Susan Barker is the author of Sayonara Bar and The Orientalist and the Ghost, both longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. She grew up in East London with a Chinese-Malyasian mother and a British father, and studied creative writing at the University of Manchester. She spent several years living in Beijing while working on The Incarnations, and currently lives in the UK.

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    Reviews for The Incarnations

    4/5

    131 ratings14 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Intense, brutal history of China intermingled with a story set in modern-day Beijing. The past chasing the present storyline only serves to make them both resemble each other. Though circumstances differ in each, the characters in both struggle to maintain their dignity and sense of humanity.
    • 3/5
      This book has an intriguing premise. It's well acted and it has a lovely use of language. However, the story lines generally felt drawn out and repetitive.
    • 4/5
      Wang is a taxi driver in modern day Beijing who begins receiving mysterious and disturbing letters left in his cab. The letter purport to describe past lives of his, and to be written by someone whose soul has been connected to Wang's throughout these incarnations. Wang, in the meantime, struggles to make ends meet and to maintain his family, his wife and little girl, and to keep them safe from the letter writer, whom Wang assumes and fears is an unhinged stalker. His wife's job--she is a masseuse--disturbs him, but as she rightly points out, they need the money. We gradually have Wang's own background filled in, and then we have the letters to read, vivid and often harrowing descriptions of lives lived throughout the history of China, beginning with a small girl in a rural village in 637 A.D. and running up through the Cultural Revolution. All of these lives, including Wang's "current" life driving and walking the streets of Beijing, are described in admirable and convincing detail. Barker is English, but she lived in Beijing during her research for this novel. The many strands of this story come together well, although I found the ending unfortunately abrupt. The Incarnations is not always an easy reading experience, but I would rate it a very worthwhile one.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      A wonderful book tying together the history of China in snippets with a taxi cab driver in modern day Beijing through stories of lives past. At times, the story is brutal. The unnamed letter writer tells a tale of betrayal and love - of choices good and choices bad. There is also a story of being homosexual in a world where that will get you killed, or locked up in a mental institution.
    • 5/5
      As described in many reviews, what a sweeping arc of a story! Wow! Thoroughly enjoyed. Some bits had be scratching my head for a bit, especially as they were just getting introduced, just getting moving. But overall, again I'll say 'Wow! And I think I actually learned some things about China that I didn't know going in to the story. Looking forward to her next book...but considering the epicocity (trust me, that's a word, just made it up) of this book, I'm guessing it'll be a while before we see a new Barker book.
    • 4/5
      “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.
    • 3/5
      I read this book ll the way through but frankly, I found it a chore. Without giving the plot away it is about past lives. The past lives seem disconnected, the author acknowledges, this as intentional, and it somehow didn't work for me. Ti e summarily judgemental my 'elevator' review is life in China really sucks but it used to be even worse. The callous disregard for human life, the cruelty, filth and degradation, while likely accurate, got me down.
    • 5/5
      Just as the title suggests, these are tales (as in more than one well-developed story) of past lives. It is not time travel, the lives occurred sequentially. The story revolves around two central characters with several names dependent on the lives described in different eras. In the present era we meet Wang Jun, a NAÏVE Beijing taxi driver and a person seemingly living in ignorance of his multiple pasts. Son of a wealthy, therefore necessarily corrupt, communist party official, Wang turned away from the easy life of a son and heir to riches and eventually became a taxi driver. His life is described up to the taxi driver epiphany through the memories of Wang supplemented by occasional interjections of the RECORDER. The recorder’s self-assigned job is to bring clarity and self-awareness to Wang. Both NAÏVE and RECORDER will assume several personal and sexual identities as they travel in tandem through several life iterations.At the same time Barker treats the reader to fascinating character sketches, she informs us about several events unique to Chinese culture and history. The reader has the responsibility to remember this is a novel. The stories might inspire the curious reader to read referenced history on such things as the Tanka people, foot binding, protected foreign communities, and the Mongol invasions, to name a few events that have a unique Chinese interpretation.There are several lines that stopped me even in the middle of some of the stories. They made sense in the context of the stories; read out of context they reminded me of lines that, if they appeared on the advertising blub of the book would make me want to buy and read the book. Here are a couple of examples:The unnamed RECORDER in one of the letters to Wang.Did you know Yida is a reincarnate too? In her first life she was a flea who lived in the fur of a stray dog. She guzzled the dog’s blood and used her hind legs to leap out of harm’s way when the mongrel’s claws scratched at the itch of her. In Yida’s second life she was a tapeworm, hooked onto the intestinal wall of a cow. She grew to two metres in length on the cow’s ingested grass and caused a gut ache so severe the beast lowed in constant pain. Though human in her third life, Yida is still a parasite. She saps your energy as you sleep, Driver Wang (p. 178).Here, Wang is returning home to an empty house expecting to see Yida and daughter Echo.Coffee cups and bowls, peeled eggshells and the walnuts Yida feeds Echo to improve her grades (persuaded by the superstition that they nourish the brain, because they are the same wrinkled, hemispherical shape) [p. 236-237].As far as sex, there is plenty of it. Complex metrosexual relationships are described with very colorful language at many levels. From the use of the taboo “c” word to expressions such as “jade pavilion”, sex acts are described with delicacy appropriate to the character at different levels of society. Educated concubines express themselves differently from a self-educated fisherman apprentice. Wang Jun exists in the present with almost no awareness of any past lives. There is that nagging feeling that there must be more to life than this. He has seen the highs and lows of his present life. His childhood with his parents was a bit unusual. A very wealthy father was almost never seen. Busy networking to maintain a high flying position in the communist party, dad was rarely home. When he was home, he was usually drunk. Not surprisingly, there were plenty of other women. Both Wang and mom were aware of this. Mom and Wang had an unusually close relationship, so much so that dad suspected mom-son incest. This leads to Wang being shunned and sent to a boarding school, mom descending gradually and with certainty into the deeper realms of mental illness, and dad just being dad, concerned only about himself. Mom eventually goes to a mental hospital for a protracted stay and Wang eventually learns she is dead. Not to be outdone in the mental health department, Wang also manages to be committed for an extended stay in a mental ward. He meets Zeng, a character (and suspected RECORDER) that will appear in many places and times throughout the book.Released from the hospital, Wang turns his back on his heretofore life as son of a rich official and university student; he becomes a taxi driver. Yida, a massage parlor girl hanging out after work on a street corner in the rain, accepts Wang’s offer of a ride and marriage. An interesting character development is to watch how much alike Yida and mother Liu are, or become. Shades of Oedipus!! While all this is going on Wang is steadily driving a taxi through pre-Olympic Games Bird Nest Beijing. Taxi drivers are willing or unwilling people watchers, there is no escape, so the reader is treated to the effects on the everyday Chinese populace of a society morphing into very materialistic capitalism. Occasionally, passengers will forgetfully leave things in his taxi. That is when the letters begin to appear. The table of contents will reveal there are at least six of them; all hint at something dark in Wang’s past. Wang takes these as a threat and hates the idea of being under surveillance by an unknown. First problem, who is placing the letters in his taxi? Which of the many passengers “forgot” them? This is the device that serves as a container for all the situations in the book. Surprises are everywhere in this book. The reader meets characters that are certainly doomed to meet a violent end. Other characters die rather abruptly, severely interrupting reader complacency and expectations. The ending is both a surprise and complex. No one or two sentence spoiler could do it justice; I won’t attempt to construct one.I will look for reviews from academics on Chinese history to see how they review or criticize this superb work of fiction.
    • 3/5
      Quite unpleasant, though beautifully written, with a raw style that is similar to Gone Girl.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 5/5
      This novel is a little like a cloisonné vase: a complex artistic metal framework frozen in colorful enamel matrices. As the story progresses the reader gradually becomes aware that Wang Jun and his “soul mate” have been ensnared by bouts of love and betrayal for centuries through five reincarnations. “Fate condemns us to bring about the other’s downfall.” The five stories are exceptionally well done and totally engaging, although without exception, quite brutal and nightmarish. This dark mood works well in the novel but one wonders if Barker’s portrayal of the inhumanity in civilized China actually was as prevalent as her narratives suggest. The stories are the colorful enamel representing five important periods in Chinese history: the 7th Century Tang Dynasty, the attack of the Mongol hordes in the 13th Century, the infamous reign of Emperor Jiajing in the16th-century, the time of the British occupation in the 19th Century, and the Cultural Revolution of Mao in the 20th. Not unlike a cloisonné vase, these colorful stories highlight the dark and complex framework of Wang’s contemporary existence in Beijing. His personal life is falling apart, characterized by estrangement from his father, an unhappy marriage, experimentation with a homosexual relationship and his own decent in fortunes from being the promising son of a major government official to a taxi driver. Also Wang is recovering from a mental breakdown and the premature death of his mother after she suffers her own mental breakdown. By leaving long narratives in his taxi, Wang’s “soul mate” enters this grim picture bent on making him aware of their shared struggles through their previous lives. Barker manages to create mystery in her story by not revealing the identity of the “soulmate” until the end of her narrative. No one believes the reincarnation story, but Wang suspects his homosexual partner, Zeng, is writing the letters; while his wife suspects that her husband is the writer. This novel is a success because of its unique and engaging structure, and accomplished writing that evokes China, past and present. Unfortunately, Barker’s worldview seems excessively dark. There does not seem to be an acceptable way to live in this world without strength and self-interest. Altruism only leads to defeat. As Wang’s mother puts it: “You will be crushed with countless millions all your life long.”
    • 4/5
      I received a copy of The Incarnations from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.The Incarnations alternates between two genres, contemporary and historical fiction, and are linked together between the protagonist’s previous lives. Wang Yu's co-reincarnate is the guide through the journey. Wang is a taxi driver in Beijing during the preparation for the 2008 Olympics. One day, he finds a letter from his spiritual partner who has been documenting their past lives. The biographer secretly delivers letters to Wang as he goes about his daily struggles facing the demons of his overbearing dad who has had a stroke and raising a daughter with his wife, with a meager background, who works at night at a seedy massage parlor. Wang has a troubled past as he was placed in a mental institution while in college. In present times, he has reconnected with his homosexual lover, with whom he was romantically involved at the institution. These hardships are interspersed with tales that draw on China’s history and Wang’s place in each period of time. Susan Barker does and outstanding job pulling disparate elements together into a cohesive whole with beautiful, fluid writing. Barker creates a release from the tragic tale with a well-balanced interspersion of humor. The Incarnations is a clever and imaginative novel that a reader can really sink his or her teeth into.
    • 4/5
      I’ve always been intrigued by reincarnation and was beyond excited when I received an ARC of this book. The Incarnations was brilliantly and uniquely written. I didn’t expect the book to be as dark as it was, but it worked really well. It was a great mix of historical fiction and romance. Even though I don’t read a lot of historical fiction my attention never wavered. Instantly became a favorite.