The Envelopes - Hasu August - ★★★

AUTHOR: Hasu August

GENRE: Contemporary Drama

PUBLICATION DATE: January 14, 2025

RATING: 3 stars.

In a Nutshell: A contemporary drama about the struggles faced by an ordinary family in China. Has some interesting topics that aren’t commonly seen in OwnVoices Chinese fiction, but the plot needs more structuring. The blurb is somewhat misleading, but surprisingly, the actual content is even better than the blurb. A good option if you aren’t too fussy about a meandering writing style.

Plot Preview:

Thirty-three-year-old Jade Bai, an HR professional with an MNC, is married into an influential family. Her father-in-law is a top-tier government official, leading to his getting many envelopes to earn favour, though he always refuses the offerings thanks to his uprightness.

When Jade becomes pregnant, her mind goes to through the events of the past seven years, many of which have left long-term guilt, grief, and trauma. Can she let go of the past and accept the pregnancy?

The story comes to us mostly in Jade’s first-person perspective.

A majority of contemporary OwnVoices books by Chinese writers focus on the same old (though still important) topics of communism, the one-child policy, and the gender discrimination. This book is quite refreshing in that sense, offering us two newish topics to explore: the widespread corruption in the corporate and political arena, and the pressures of the education system.

Both of the topics, when viewed in isolation, are handled well in this novel. I recently watched a reel that showed a little Chinese girl crying in the arms of her father for having to do endless homework. I was heartbroken to see her sob so pitifully just for homework. This novel depicts much more of the trauma that Chinese children go through in the name of education. The pressure comes not just from the teachers but also from parents and fellow students. Many of the revelations are eye-opening and heartwrenching. I loved this theme and wouldn’t have minded its being the core focus of the whole plot. Sadly, it garnered only half the spotlight.

The second topic of corporate misdemeanour is also tackled in detail, covering the corruption in both the private and the government sectors. This wasn’t a topic of my preference, so I didn’t enjoy this content to that extent. (I also found it tough to buy that Jada, the medical-nurse-turned-HR pro could detect manipulation of accounts so easily.)

These are two equally important and quite vast topics. Tackling them both in a single plot was certainly possible, but too ambitious. A parallel uncovering of the two topics would have worked better. In this novel, the plot begins with Jade’s current dilemma, and then moves into the past where the dominant topic is education with only minimal background mentions of corruption. At the halfway mark, there’s a sudden declaration of “Part Two”, and the topics swap roles, with the corporate corruption suddenly taking the lead. This sudden change of direction didn’t work too well for me. Each section felt too distinct in tone and content, as if they came from two separate novels. Instead of having a compartmented approach for each topic, I would have preferred both to unfurl a little at a time.

The timelines could also have worked better for me. The book begins with the contemporary time (2012), then suddenly goes into an extended flashback, returns again to the present, again goes to the past and continues this cycle without warning. There are minimal time indicators and many characters. The start was especially confusing in its narration with many random time and scene shifts. After a while, I gave up on trying to understand what the plot was leading towards and just went with the flow. This worked better for me, though it was still a tad perplexing at times to keep up with everything. I wish the timeline had either been linear or clearly indicated & segregated.

While the book blurb is good, it somehow gives a very different indication of the storyline. It’s not inaccurate, but it doesn’t give a clue of the actual content that dominates the plot. It also goes much beyond the initial chapters.

The writing is good, with some impressive vocabulary popping in regularly. However, the content also feels a bit verbose. The conversations aren’t like ordinary people would speak, with many GRE-level words and a certain theatrical quality to the lines. For instance, no one these days would say “plight your troth.” Seeing such phrases used in contemporary conversations is odd. Some of the dialogues even includes historical facts, which do benefit the reader but don’t feel authentic to the character. There are also many idioms taken from North American as well as British usage. A few of the idioms were so colloquial that I hadn’t even heard them before. (eg. “talk turkey”, “cut and thrust”) This further befuddled me.

There were quite a few interesting characters in this novel, but as we get to see them only through Jade’s first-person viewpoint, we don’t get to know their personalities until and unless she reveals the information. So for those characters who change colour after a point, the transition in their behaviour feels abrupt. I would have loved to get a better handle on Jada’s husband Deping’s character. There was a lot of potential in him, but he is barely used in the plot.

A shoutout to the cover art – I loved how it wove together both the main elements of the plot.

All in all, I loved the content but not the approach. The book offers a good story about a part of China not often seen in fiction. But it would have worked even better (for me) with a round of finetuning, especially for the timelines and the presentation of the two main themes.

Recommended to those who are interested in a genuine insider look at the contemporary Chinese life and aren’t too fussy about random timelines or a meandering writing approach.

My thanks to author Hasu August and Earnshaw Books for providing me with a complimentary copy of “The Envelopes”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

Content Warnings: Miscarriage, death, cancer.