This book is somewhere between a 4 and 4.5, but rather than agonize over the decimal value, let’s get to it. This is ultimately a story about a family with secrets trying to survive in a surveillance-obsessed authoritarian society. Each family member struggles with resentment over unmet needs. This family would not exist as a unit in a free society. They lie, maneuver, and manipulate one another. And yet when threatened, each is willing to go to extraordinary and often touching lengths to protec

This book is somewhere between a 4 and 4.5, but rather than agonize over the decimal value, let’s get to it. This is ultimately a story about a family with secrets trying to survive in a surveillance-obsessed authoritarian society. Each family member struggles with resentment over unmet needs. This family would not exist as a unit in a free society. They lie, maneuver, and manipulate one another. And yet when threatened, each is willing to go to extraordinary and often touching lengths to protect and care for one another.



An Excess Male is a compelling, character-driven story that I would categorize more as speculative fiction. If you were looking for a sci-fi, tech-based thriller, you may be disappointed. Technology serves to further the plot and seems to produce outcomes that are a little too convenient - the hyper-detailed level of mind-reading of “The Pursuit of Happiness” compared to the easily exploited flaws in surveillance systems stands out as an example. The story moves slowly until close to the end. I did not mind this at all as I enjoyed the character interaction, but your mileage may vary.



Beyond this point lie a synopsis and character analyses with spoilers, so continue at your own risk.



In a not too distant future China, the male to female ratio has grown large enough that the authoritarian government deals with it by encouraging state sanctioned polyandry, often with two or more brothers sharing a wife. Wealthy party leaders find ways of exempting themselves and hoarding women. Unmarried men are viewed as a threat to society and subject to surveillance. Gay and non-neurotypical men (the willfully sterile and lost boys, respectively) are forbidden from marriage and childbearing. One might be tempted to think that womens’ scarcity might lead to more rights or greater bargaining power within their marriages. One would be dead wrong. This version of China is still depressingly patriarchal with women being treated as more expensive commodities rather than actual human beings.



The book opens with single Wei-guo in negotiations with a matchmaker and his two fathers to enter into the marriage of May-Ling and her two brother husbands Hann and XX. As third husband, Wei-guo would be anything but the man of the house, with Hann being the authority and distributor of money. Despite all of this, Wei-guo believes this family is his best and maybe only chance at experiencing romantic love and fatherhood.



Now for the characters...



Hann is a sympathetic but deeply frustrating character. He is a closeted gay man who long ago had to choose between admitting his sexuality and being denied the chance to have children, or concealing his nature in order to be a father. He wanted a child more than a lover, but takes calculated risks by having discreet sexual encounters with men in his badminton club. Hann sees himself as a good man, and perhaps in a better world, this might be true. He hates authoritarian China, but within his family unit, he IS the state - controlling the family finances, lying, micromanaging the sexual and social behavior of his spouses under the guise of protecting the family while hypocritically taking risks that could result in the family being forcibly dissolved and his child labeled a bastard.



In my opinion, XX is the unsung hero of this tale. Highly intelligent and probably autistic, XX is forced to live in a family that is absolutely NOT designed to meet his very simple needs: solitude, a pet dog, and freedom from the chaos, loud noises, imposed diets, and coercive sex he is subjected to. He is treated like a child by Hann and May-Ling because of his difficulty reading social cues when he is actually the member of the family who is the most capable of safely navigating life under a government that is intent on destroying them. While it is clear than Hann loves XX, his actions toward him are cruelly paternalistic: demanding that his brother endure marriage and fatherhood when his brother does not like the chosen wife and really, REALLY does not want children. Despite all of this, XX shows genuine care for a family that does not understand him by devising plans to save them all from prosecution and even death.



May-Ling is arguably the least developed character. We know she was bred by her parents as a money-maker, lied to by her husbands, and forced to endure sex with two men: one whom she is physically repulsed by and one who she IS attracted to but is incapable of giving her any meaningful intimacy. She occupies the lowest place in the family pecking order and is responsible for the lion’s share of child care for the family’s hyperactive toddler, Bei Bei. Unlike the three men of the story, she has no career to give her a sense of self and despite her not enjoying domestic duties at all, we don’t get much of a sense of what she WOULD like out of life. She’s very beaten down and her world of Mommy and Me busses and scary playground monitor cops is made only marginally more tolerable by her ability to lie. At the end of the book, I know almost nothing about the women of this world. Where are the working women? Where are the feminists and intellectuals? Where do lesbian and bi women fit in?



Wei-guo is infectiously earnest, honorable, and likable. He sees the best in the three people he’s about to marry. I was constantly on edge fearing he was going to be absolutely eaten alive by the political machinations of single male hating party schemes.



I’m not sure how to feel about the ending. I like Hann more as a rebel than a controlling family man and his situation is definitely not without hope. While XX’s ongoing battle to stay one step ahead of hackers seems realistic and noble, his decision to give up autonomy and peace of mind for a family full of drama is not the outcome I would like to have for my favorite character. Wei-guo, May-Ling, and Bei Bei all seem to be doing better than where they started. While it’s nice to see Wei-guo and May-Ling find happiness after a lot of suffering, I’m not sure how I feel about a story that sacrifices the happiness and well-being of its gay and neurodivergent characters in service to the straight nuclear family members. But flawed and imperfect as this situation is, I appreciate the job this author did constructing a non-traditional family that loves and cares for everyone in it in against all odds. Wei-guo at one point informs an audience that the merengue dance was invented by necessary by Caribbean slaves manacled together. This is a good metaphor for love improbably surviving and flourishing under totalitarianism.