The Dissident

First off let me say that I enjoyed reading this first novel by Nell Freudenberger. It's young and it's clever. It's the story of a dissident Chinese artist Yuan Zhou, a victim of political persecution, who arrives in California to teach at an exclusive girls' school and to present an exhibition of his art. It is also the story of the Travers family which hosts him. It's about a broken family and a broken culture. It's about people with problems and people with secrets. The well-heeled Travers family consists of a distant, boring psychoanalyst dad (Gordon), a do-gooder wife and mother (Cece), a dancer daughter (Olivia) and a seriously disturbed son (Max). Adding to the mix are Gordon's brother, Phil, who has had an affair with Cece and his sister, Joan, who is an emotionally isolated author. There is also a sexually precocious troublemaker, a talented Chinese adolescent artist, a colony of Beijing performance artists, various peripheral romantic interests and a menagerie of pets. A number of fundamental questions are raised. What is art? What is truth? There are a lot of characters and some of them lack depth but I appreciated Freudenberger's skilled,witty and compassionate descriptions of them. I found the ending to be a bit anti-climactic but I still recommend the novel.