Letters from Suzhou

This is a free downloadable book available from Smashwords.

It is written by eight different authors who each provide a number of ‘letters home' published together to try and form a narrative for foreigners all living in Suzhou (Jiangsu Province) in China, where most of them teach English.

My expectations (other than the poetry – but that is just me – can't abide by poetry) were of interesting tales of an ex-pat life in China. Some of the ‘letters' provided this in an entertaining and articulate matter – others provided one or the other (entertainment or articulate delivery) but not both. Some of the other letters however were pretty mundane, and didn't really hold much interest for me.

The authors were from an array of countries – Australia, USA, UK, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, and are of varying ages and backgrounds. This added some interest as it led to a varied assessment of living and working in China.

I wouldn't want to go so far as to say the letters were a gimmicky way of presenting the stories, but some of the language in them felt too unnatural for them to be 100% legitimate letters to family or friends, but I suspect they were tidied up a bit for general publication.

So overall, for me, this had potential, but by a ratio of about 1:5 (enjoyable : not holding my interest), I can't really give this more than 2 stars.