Book title: These Violent Delights
ISBN: 9781534482777
Author: Chloe Gong
Publisher: Simon & Schuster US
Publication year: 2020
Price: RM59.90
This place hums to the tune of debauchery. This city is filthy and deep in the thrall of unending sin, so saturated with the kiss of decadence that the sky threatens to buckle and crush all those living vivaciously beneath it in punishment.
These Violent Delights takes place in Shanghai during the 1920s. The city has many foreign occupiers, including the British, French, Americans, and Russians. It’s also a loose retelling of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
The star-crossed lovers in this story are Roma Montagov, the heir of the White Flowers Gang, and Juliette Cai, whose father is the leader of the rival Scarlet Gang.
Juliette Cai was exiled to America following a disastrous romantic affair, and she has only recently returned.
She must now prove to everyone that she is just as ruthless as her father in her fight to keep the Scarlet Gang in control of Shanghai.
To stop the mysterious plague that is killing her people and causing them to rip out their own throats, she must go against her family’s wishes and work with Roma — the heir to the White Flowers and sworn enemies of the Scarlet Gang.
She hears rumours that a terrifying creature in the river is to blame for the epidemic.
Worse, because she was exiled for falling in love with Roma when they were both 15 years old, she is the one whose loyalty is constantly called into question.
Roma should be unhappy with their fragile alliance, but he was never able to move on from Juliette Cai.
“You destroy me and then you kiss me. You give me reason to hate you and then you give me reason to love you. Is this a lie or the truth? Is this a ploy or your heart reaching for me?”
They are working together to solve a mystery when she reappears in his life, making everything more difficult than necessary.
Though the Russian White Flowers are new to Shanghai, they wield considerable power, and if Roma’s father discovers that he is collaborating with the enemy, his birth right will not protect him.
If everyone dies as a result of a mysterious, horrifying virus, none of these minor power struggles will matter. Unless, of course, the epidemic is just another tool in the battle to rule Shanghai.
There is a lot going on right now. Romeo and Juliet in Shanghai in the 1920s is an elevator pitch; add a mystery, a monster hunt, and the complexities of Western empire, and you have almost too much to handle.
It makes categorising These Violent Delights difficult. Even though Juliette and Roma have a tension, they don’t have time to pause and feel it, so it’s not a romance.
The main characters and their goons run around the city, investigating and snooping and generally causing more mayhem than they prevent.
It’s a heist and a detective story (with Roma playing the weary detective and Juliette playing the femme fatale).
More than anything else, These Violent Delights provides a rich depiction of a time and place that is rarely depicted.
I was surprised, having little prior knowledge of Shanghai in the early twentieth century, by how much colonial influences had contributed to the city’s sense of being a Western metropolis.
It wasn’t called “the Paris of the East” for nothing. The consequences of historical events such as the Opium Wars, the rise of communism, and the ongoing struggle for supremacy between the French and the English are all present on the page, entangled and complex, pulling the city in various directions.
The plot is also a little complicated, and there are times when the reader notices a discovery before the characters, which causes the pace to lag a little.
The characters, on the other hand, are fascinating in their own right, offering queer representation and a great deal of moral nuance as they all struggle with the brutality expected of them.
These Violent Delights, on the other hand, did not strike me as a book for young adults.
The real teenage emotions are mostly found in the history, which progressively reveals Juliette and Roma’s early romance and eventual breakup.
They both appear to be weary grownups in the story’s present, asserting their authority and acknowledging that who they truly are doesn’t matter because their power comes with bleak responsibilities.
However, I believe that in these difficult times, both teen and adult readers will find the atmosphere compelling.
After finishing this book, I was left wanting more, though perhaps not in a good way. I still strongly recommend it based on the themes alone, and I think it’s a really impressive debut.
