Dane Huckelbridge's Reviews > Soul Mountain

This book is admittedly a bit challenging—its structure is unconventional, folk tales mingle with personal history, and it isn't bound so much by a plot as by a pervading spirit of search. But what a beautiful search it is. In seeking out a mountain that may or may not exist, Xingjian takes the reader on a journey of self-discovery that isn't marked so much by what it reveals, as by what remains hidden and perfectly unknown. The last page is perhaps my favorite in literature—a perfect silence, enshrouded in snow, in which the divine can appear everywhere and in everything . . . even as something as seemingly unimportant as a frog. Really a lovely book, but not an easy one.