According to the Chinese creation myth, there are two types of love: fire love and water love. Water love is steady and comfortable, while fire love is fleeting and passionate. It is this fire love and raw sexual energy for which a woman named Nin searches in Tinling Choong's provocative and poetic "FireWife."
On Thursday at 7 p.m., Choong will conduct a reading, book signing and discussion of "FireWife" in the Robert Frost Room of the Dartmouth Bookstore.
On her 31st birthday, Nin leaves her corporate job and loving husband in order to photograph women throughout the world in a quest to uncover a universal truth about womanhood. Like many of the women she meets, Nin is haunted by a tragedy. As a child her younger sister Mian fell down a well and died while Nin had been watching her. Even as an adult, Nin is still wracked with guilt. She has repressed her naturally wild spirit and has lived a tame existence as a dedicated employee, faithful wife and loyal daughter. Itching inside her, though, is the desire to be the lustful essence of fire.
The story of Nin is told through flashbacks, dreams and her experiences as she flies on an airplane around the world to take photographs. "FireWife" is very mystical and is written in a breathless stream-of-conscious prose. It is exquisite, playful and inconsistent in its form -- there is a mixture of regular-length paragraphs and short thoughts. Many lines contain only thre- word phrases that flow across the page like poetry.
Through Nin's story, Choong skillfully interweaves the stories of seven other women worldwide who are exploited because of their gender. Zimi rents her forehead as advertising space and donates her eggs to an infertile friend. Ut, a 14-year-old girl, uses the money she receives from prostitution to help her dying father. As her name suggests, Table sells her naked body as a table at a sushi restaurant. Maria finds herself confused by a world that idolizes waif-like women and uses bulimia to combat the memories of her stepfather's molestation.
Clearly the stories of many of these women are depressing, and Choong does not mean this to be a carefree, happy-go-lucky book. All of the women have tragedies that they can't let go, but the strength of this story is the challenge of breaking this cycle of analysis and regret.
While the language is beautifully visceral and often sexual, repetition is one thing that bogs down "FireWife." Although Choong employs it as a device to emphasize certain events, it can get tiring and readers may find themselves rolling their eyes when a certain line has been repeated 10 times in the last two chapters.
From a philosophical standpoint and in terms of themes of female empowerment, Choong succeeds, but the book may not have as widespread an appeal to male audiences or readers who only feel comfortable with a chronological, straightforward story. Like the flames of a fire, it is sporadic and entrancing. It jumps from city to city, woman to woman, memory to memory.
Unlike many other female-driven stories, "Firewife" does not push monogamy or morality as a goal. It is the opposite of preachy; rather, it encourages women to give in to their impulses. Nin yearns for pure desire, a man who "embodies the ideal essence of a single moment of love free from time. Impermanent. Anamalous. Disconnected."
One of the most interesting characters is an old man who urges Nin to "begin living with the swing. Begin being with things. Let come and go." He teaches her that her true self is the fire self and that she must embrace the fire in order to rid herself of guilt. The theme of overcoming guilt and shame by giving into temptation is refreshing and certainly not the message that readers usually receive.
There is no doubt that "FireWife" is powerful and meaningful in an existential way and forces readers to question what life is all about. Choong makes us wonder: Do we owe it to ourselves to be selfish? Can we give in to whims without hurting the ones we love?
Ultimately, Choong urges readers to "Listen to your skin. Let it breathe. Let it eat. Let it be the catalyst." It is okay to be wild, to be passionate and to be inconsistent because that is true human nature. Choong shows through her skillful take on a Chinese folktale that impulses can be held back only for so long. Inevitably they will burn to the surface.
