A E Housman's poem that gives James Ellroy's Blood's a Rover its name could just as easily provide an epigraph for this.
"Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;
Breath's a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad; when the journey's over
There'll be time enough for sleep."
This is a sweeping tale set in China, almost a fable, although underpinned with startling pictures of reality. It tells of a rural family and their struggles to survive and even prosper through good times and bad. It brought to mind a mixture of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, although not quite as political as the first nor tragic as the second.
