A review of ‘The Shanghai Circle’ by a member of the Online Book Club on the 22nd of February 2024
4 out of 5 stars
The Shanghai Circle talks about different people, particularly Irina, a beautiful Russian girl; Joseph, the son of a triad leader; and Davina, the daughter of a large trading house and people who are involved in their lives. The characters are from different parts of the society, but they have in common the fact of living in Shanghai in 1936, plus even if they are from different backgrounds their lives intersect with each other. Every chapter is dedicated to one character, revealing some information about them in each chapter and making the reader discover how they are connected.
This way of presenting the story might be a little confusing at the beginning but continuing reading became more and more entertaining leading the reader to know the characters, their feelings, and their history and be always curious and eager to learn more about them, including their personal stories and past.
The historical picture of Shanghai in the 1930s is also presented, talking about the Japanese threat and the European question that will lead to the outbreak of World War II, but all this still remains in the background, not obscuring the stories of the characters and giving only more elements to make their stories truer and real and I very much appreciated that at the end of the book the author specified the real facts and works of imagination.
Even if the book counts more than 300 pages the desire to know leads to read without noticing the pages that flow.
I rate the book 4 out of 5. In my opinion there are no grammatical errors or problems of structure, on the contrary I found the book easy to understand thanks to the choice of lexicon and a structure that is not heavy. As I mentioned maybe at the beginning the structure of the book can make a little difficult to get into the story but going forward this feeling changes. I must admit that I really enjoyed the book and being this the first of a trilogy, Chinese circles, I cannot wait to read the other two.
I recommend it to those who love stories full of events and that have characters from different social strata and nationalities and that do not disdain a bit of historical knowledge on the background of a reading.