The writing was not fantastic. There was a lot of sex that wasn't particularly well written about. I didn't learn as much as I'd hoped to about 1980s China. Yet I really liked the novel: an elemental tale of coming out of the closet and the impossibility of true, deep love when one partner has not finished that journey. It could've been Calgary Comrades or Santiago Comrades or Trenton Comrades and gotten just as deeply inside of me.