An obsession with language, and how it simultaneously frees and limits thought, has been a consistent thread in Xiaolu Guo’s work since her 2007 debut, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. Like that book, her marvellous new memoir, Radical, is organised around short chapters with disparate words and phrases as titles. For each one, she gives their etymology and Chinese translation.
In Chinese writing, a “radical” is the key component of a character, and Guo’s exploration of what it means to be rooted – to a continent, a marriage, a lexicon – is exhaustive and nakedly honest. She asks “What is language doing in our daily life?”, referring to “language as a way to live an authentic life”. The problem of living authentically – what it might mean for a rootless woman in the 21st century – is the book’s central question.
