SOURCE: Jenner, W. J. F. “Heading for the Hills.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5110 (9 March 2001): 22.

In the following review, Jenner argues that Soul Mountain is a book about a male mid-life crisis and criticizes the English translation of the novel, noting the “clumsiness of expression in virtually every paragraph.”

So you are climbing this mountain—which mountain?—almost any mountain in central or southwest China—searching for you don't quite know what. Or perhaps you are wandering around the streets of country towns, drawn by the ambiance folklorique. Sometimes you are catching up on a spot of archaeology and ruminating on neolithic pottery spindle whorls (or spinning wheels, as your translator so quaintly renders them). Or again, you might be talking to friends. You press-gang your reader into being a character in some parts of the book [Soul Mountain] by addressing him (and it evidently is him) as “you...