Book Review: The Girl Who Played Go

According to the American Go Association, the game of Go dates back about 4,000 to 5,000 years in ancient Asia. More popular than chess in Asia, it consists of two sets of warring stones, black and white, trying to take control of the gridded game board by cornering and surrounding the opposing colored stones, allowing those stones to be removed from the board. The game requires patience and skill to determine where to place the stones to the best advantage.

Shan Sa takes the game of Go from the board and sets it in the physical world of 1930s Manchuria. Manchuria becomes the battleground as Japan begins an invasion. An unnamed teenaged girl -- the only girl in her entire town allowed to play Go with the men -- struggles with her budding sexuality and plays against an unnamed Japanese soldier, disguised as a Chinese man in order to hopefully learn some secrets about the resistance movement fomenting across Manchuria. In alternating chapters, their stories unfold like the placement of the stones, with the girl and the soldier trying to understand one another through the game play.

What begins as a historical drama, set at a time of intense conflict between China and Japan, turns into a surprising love story. While the young girl struggles with her first bouts of love and the soldier battles with the memories of the women he's encountered, the two somehow connect over the ancient game and find themselves growing more attached to one another than two strangers could have expected. The alternating chapters also allow for both glimpses at the struggles going on in China at the time and differing views of those same events -- such as when the two first meet, the young girl decides that her unknown opponent is falling into her game traps, while from the soldiers perspective, he understands almost immediately what she's trying to do with her game strategy.

This is one of those books I chose because I found the title intriguing. Perhaps not the best method but sometimes well worth it when a novel as engrossing and beautifully written as this comes along.

Image from Random House.