Excess Male (King)

An Excess Male 
Maggie Shen King, 2017
HarperCollins
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062662552


Summary
A chilling dystopian tale of politics, inequality, marriage, love, and rebellion, set in a near-future China, that further explores the themes of the classics The Handmaid's Tale.

Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son.

Now 40 million of them can't find wives.

China’s One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than twenty-five percent of men in their late thirties will not have a family of their own.

An Excess Male is one such leftover man’s quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.

Wei-guo holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to improve himself, his small business, and in turn, his country, his chance at love will come. He finally saves up the dowry required to enter matchmaking talks at the lowest rung as a third husband—the maximum allowed by law.

Only a single family—one harboring an illegal spouse—shows interest, yet with May-ling and her two husbands, Wei-guo feels seen, heard, and connected to like never before. But everyone and everything—walls, streetlights, garbage cans—are listening, and men, excess or not, are dispensable to the State.

Wei-guo must reach a new understanding of patriotism and test the limits of his love and his resolve in order to save himself and this family he has come to hold dear.

In Maggie Shen King’s startling and beautiful debut, An Excess Male looks to explore the intersection of marriage, family, gender, and state in an all-too-plausible future. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Raised—Taiwan; Seattle, Washington, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University;
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, California


Maggie Shen King is the author of An Excess Male, published by Harper Voyager. Her short stories have appeared in Ecotone, ZYZZYVA, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Fourteen Hills. Her manuscript "Fortune's Fools," won Second Prize in Amazon's 2012 Breakthrough Novel Award. She is Goodread's September 2017 Debut Author of the Month.

Maggie grew up in Taiwan and attended both Chinese and American schools before moving to Seattle at age sixteen. She attended Harvard University where she took a single creative writing class but did not begin writing in earnest until 2004 when her youngest child started middle school.

Since then, she has studied with Nancy Packer, Eric Puchner, Thomas McNeely, and Otis Haschemeyer at Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program. She shows her work regularly to two writing groups, one of which was formed at the conclusion of her first course at Stanford.

Maggie lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. When she is not writing, she can usually be found hacking her way around a golf course. She adores roses and is always on the lookout for shade-tolerant varieties that can thrive in the odd corners of her garden. (Adapted fom the author's website.)

Read an interview with the author on The Quillery.

Book Reviews
What King does so skillfully, with a light, deft, even comedic, touch, is to limn the human heart — with all its unruly urges and desires. She captures the vagaries of life, how easily one can veer off the "correct" path and risk punishment by a chillingly repressive state. [But] the best part of An Exccess Male happens to be its characters, who grow and change, who are lovable, sometimes irascible — yet who surprise us with their innate kindness.… [The book is] a winner — a romance, captivating family drama, and sobering view of totalitarian power. Highly recommended. READ MORE…
P.J. Adler - LitLovers


Through an almost satirical look into a near-future China, Maggie Shen King’s debut, An Excess Male, makes a compelling argument that marriage stands as a method of societal control.… King writes distinctive and sympathetic characters, and her vision of a not-so-far future is unnerving and thought-provoking.
Everdeen Mason - Washington Post


[T]houghtful, heartbreaking…. A scary twist in the third act keeps the pages turning. King expertly explores the myriad routes to family, hope, and love in a repressive country.
Publishers Weekly


This is a believable near-future vision of what could happen with China's growing gender imbalance. The relationships between the brothers and their shared spouse are interesting, although… [the novel] doesn't quite maintain momentum for the entire novel, seeming more suited for a short story.
Library Journal


King imagines a frightening reality, in which forced cultural norms run counter to basic human rights, leaving readers exceedingly uncomfortable with its feasibility,
Booklist


Boldly envisioned and executed, An Excess Male is thrilling, provocative and genuinely frightening in its implications.
Shelf Awareness


[A] dystopian future of longing, inequality, and constant surveillance.… An intelligent, incisive commentary on how love survives—or doesn't—under the heel of the State.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. The One Child Policy was adopted in 1979 to help China reduce its population to an "ideal" 700 million in order to limit the demand for water and other resources and alleviate social, economic and environmental problems. What other forms of social engineering were carried out in this book for the public good? Who is valued under a government that espouses China First?

2. By the year 2030, China’s One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs will have created a society overrun by 30 million unmarriageable men. More than 25% of men in their late thirties will never have married. Is it more immoral to violate the traditional notion of marriage or to deny tens of millions of men the comforts of family and home? What might be another solution to this problem?

3. In a society where marriageable men outnumbered women in the millions, it seems logical that the scarcity of women would elevate their social status and role in society. What went wrong for women in this book? Were Compatibility Tests advantageous for them? Can you think of an example where women heavily outnumbered men? How did that affect the balance of power?

4. During the 18th and 19th century, polyandry (marriage where wife has more than one husband) was practiced in rural China to help impoverished families pool resources and avoid breakup of property. The elites of the Qing Dynasty considered the practice immoral, yet emperors kept concubines and wealthy men had multiple wives and mistresses. Why do you think polyandry garnered such opposition?

5. Hann was forced to live contrary to his most fundamental nature. How do you feel about him lying to May-ling and creating a sexual outlet in his badminton team?

6. By requiring him to marry and become a parent, XX’s family also forced him to live against his nature and his wishes. Was Hann right to interfere with so many details of XX’s day-to-day life? Was it for XX’s own good when Hann tried to encourage him to conform to social norms? To what extent should families of productive and independent adults like XX intrude upon their lives?

7. How do you think polyandry affects BeiBei and other children in such a family unit?

8. Privacy was of the utmost importance to XX. He insisted that his new spouse maintain a discreet digital footprint, yet he felt no compunction in planting a bug on Wei-guo, training cameras on his family in their apartment, or developing mind-reading algorithms that could be used on the public at large. Is he amoral, mercenary, or a modern-day hero?

9. What devices did the author use to build this fictional world? Did you find the world believable?

10. An Excess Male was narrated from four alternating points of view. Whose story was it? How would the story change if it was told only from Wei-guo’s or May-ling’s point of view?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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