This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

There’s some beautiful writing in The Kindness Of Solitude. I found the characters quite hard to like and I think the plotting could have been a little cleaner. Having said that it’s a great read from a hugely talented writer.

I am quite happy that I decided to read this book only after years from receiving it, not only because during my university years I happened to choose Chinese language, culture and history, but also because I probably would't have savored it that much at sixteen.

Kinder Than Solitude has been quite THE discovery for me, in a moment of my life when I really struggle to find books that capture me. The story itself was the type that I find most fascinating, a kind of mystery that is only really left at the background, when all the book focuses on is the developing of the characters and their complex psycology. In this book, we get to know three really different characters and we live with them their youth, up to the point when something changes their life and their relationship completely. What this event will be you truly understand just at the very ending.

I believe that the author's skill resides in the way the protagonists' are beautifully and deeply characterized, in the way each and every one of them is able to feel emotions that all of us can relate to and at the same time can not. Among them, Ruyu is certainly the most complex, and I struggled through all the book between my desire to feel sympathy and my undeniable trend to despise her.
The author's prose then, is really one of the best and rare one, that made me underline almost every page for the beautiful way with which she can describe also the most futile thought.

Reading Kinder Than Solitude has been for me an emotion and a pleasure also because I could recognize so many aspects of Beijing that my already bad nostalgia for the city just sharpened. "Already Beijing made her feel small, but worse than that was people's indifference to her smallness." What better quote could describe Beijing's grandeur? I felt extremely close to Ruyu's experience of the city, I could picture the group riding through the city, sipping tea from the old tea houses, share their meals in the quadrangle. But on top of all this emotional rollercoaster of memories, I loved the references to Beijing's history and China revolution. I know all too well about the sufference of that period and also, about the stolen hope of the young generation so the short but intense insight into Shaoai's characters was exquisite and meaningful for so many aspects.

I am left with so many thoughts and emotions about this book that I know for sure that this will be just the first approach with this great author and her magnificent art.

Completely out of time, but thank you Netgalley for gifting me this gem!