An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King
Published by: Harper Voyager on September 12, 2017
Pages: 416
Source: Advanced Reader’s Copy provided by my job (for free, not a paid sponsorship)
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia, Asia
”Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son. Now 40 million of them can't find wives. China’s One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than twenty-five percent of men in their late thirties will not have a family of their own. An Excess Male is one such leftover man’s quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.
Wei-guo holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to improve himself, his small business, and in turn, his country, his chance at love will come. He finally saves up the dowry required to enter matchmaking talks at the lowest rung as a third husband—the maximum allowed by law. Only a single family—one harboring an illegal spouse—shows interest, yet with May-ling and her two husbands, Wei-guo feels seen, heard, and connected to like never before. But everyone and everything—walls, streetlights, garbage cans—are listening, and men, excess or not, are dispensable to the State. Wei-guo must reach a new understanding of patriotism and test the limits of his love and his resolve in order to save himself and this family he has come to hold dear.”
My Thoughts: This book is dangerous, controversial, and extremely hard to put down.
When reading the synopsis, I was initially intrigued by the fact that this book is a dystopia based on actual events in our history. The One-Child Policy in China was introduced in 1979 as a way to help reduce population overgrowth, as well as to curb overconsumption of natural resources. The policy dictated that the majority of families in China have only once child. As of 2016, China has adopted a Two-Child Policy, allowing each family to have two children.
In An Excess Male, we see the potential future of the One-Child Policy if it had been allowed to continue to 2030. In this world, women marry two men in order to increase the chance of producing more children. In addition, a newer policy allowing women to take on a third husband has recently become in trend so that there is a higher possibility of producing heirs. I say that this book is dangerous and controversial because, despite women taking on polygamous roles, a woman’s husbands are still ultimately in control of the household, finances, etc. I think that this can be explained by the fact that there are simply so many men in China in this novel that feminism is all but stamped out
This book is told from the 4 perspectives: May-ling, young wife to 2 husbands and mother to a young child; Hann, Husband One in a triad marriage; Xiong-xin (or XX), Husband Two; and Wei-guo, the hopeful suitor to the triad marriage. The characters of Hann and XX are the most controversial because they represent two extremely fearful ‘defects’ that the world of An Excess Male is trying to eradicate: the Willfully Sterile, aka homosexuals, and Lost Boys, aka people with mental disabilities or illnesses. With both husbands on the cusp of being discovered and potentially torn from their marriage, Wei-guo is the understanding, appreciative, and helpful suitor that hopes to join their odd ranks, and even potentially ease some of the tension that these monikers have on the family.
This book is not for the easily offended because it encroaches on some very sensitive topics concerning living in hiding as a gay man and avoiding public scrutiny for mental illness. I found these topics to be extremely interesting because they are often shunned or avoided by authors in hopes of potentially selling more books by not offending anyone. I’m interested to see what other opinions surface of this dystopic book.
