These Violent Delights

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong Book Review 

“These violent delights have violent ends

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,

Which as they kiss consume”

-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 

As soon as These Violent Delights opened with the following lines from Romeo and Juliet, I was sold. In the most simplest of terms, These Violent Delights is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in 1920’s Shanghai. 

As a lover of Shakespeare, I was already intrigued, but add in the backdrop of political upheaval, historical implications, cultural contexts, and outfitted with a contemporary spin, I was head-over-heels and I had read one page and the book jacket. 

I was a little concerned that the book would still be rinse-and-repeat and that I would know how it ended before it even began, but thankfully Gong proved me very, very wrong. 

She didn’t just take Shakespeare’s work and dress it up nice and pretty, she took it apart and made her own outfit completely. 

For example, I knew that someone would drink poison pretending to be dead because that’s what happens in the original play, specifically Juliet. And poison drinking does make an appearance in Gong’s novel, but it’s not the person you expect or for the reasons you anticipate. 

So instead of taking an old and well-known story, she took the parts she liked and used it to tell her own new and complex narrative. Don’t get me wrong, you still have clashing sides, but instead of adversarial families you have warring gangs. For me personally, this was a welcome change amongst many others. 

Something else I found surprising, but also wholly embraced, was Gong’s new plot point of an inhuman monster rampaging Shanghai and killing off the gangsters in droves. 

As more and more people are being picked off by tiny bugs penetrating the brain and making people claw out their own throats, Juliette Cai and Roma Montagov find themselves reluctantly working together in order to keep control of the city they both call home and the people they will one day rule. 

It hit a little close to home amongst the Covid-19 pandemic and I’m not sure if Gong did that on purpose or if she wrote this book before the pandemic, but regardless it resonated with me in both a horrifying and relatable way that made me both want to keep reading and also grimace, but unable to look away.  

In addition to the monster and the blood feud, the backdrop of Shanghai offers a myriad amount of political, cultural, and historical factors that add to the novel overall and enrich every page with tantalizing details that make the story come alive in a beautiful way. 

Something I really enjoyed was the romance and the characters. Instead of a cookie-cutter romance (which I inevitably expected considering the source material) I was once again taken aback to find that sweet nothings and charming dialogue didn’t fit into Gong’s gritty tale. Juliette and Roma have history, mainly consisting of innocent friendship and burgeoning love, but it’s all ruined after intentional blood is spilled and guilt and blame lays heavy at their feet. 

Where our story picks up is four years after this tragic event and Roma and Juliette once again find themselves in each other’s begrudging presence and facing their sordid past, but old feelings don’t die as quickly as they would like, especially by smothering it. 

I would have liked to have seen Roma’s and Juliette’s romance from the beginning, but instead we got an established relationship in medias res situation instead, which worked for this novel, but I did find myself curious and slightly disappointed that we didn’t get to see the relationship blossoming in the first place. 

I understand why Gong made the choice to have the relationship already established as the novel is already long and starting from the beginning would have made it interminably lengthy, but still. 

Additionally, I liked all of the characters. This seems like a banal statement, but the fact that I liked nearly everyone is astounding. I almost feel like I didn’t get enough of everyone. I would have liked to have seen more of the side characters like Benedikt, Marshall, Rosalind, and Kathleen specifically as they were all intriguing and all standalone characters in their own right. 

They stood on their own two feet in the world and weren’t just fodder for Juliette and Roma’s storylines which I really appreciated, but that made it even more frustrating when we only got their perspectives sporadically and scarcely. 

I also appreciated the sheer amount of representation both ethnically and also within the LGBTQ+ spectrum, something I was a tad worried about when seeing the setting was 1920’s Shanghai, but Gong beautifully includes it like she does anything else and miraculously, it doesn’t seem out of place at all, but seamlessly incorporated. 

If it wasn’t clear by this point, I really enjoyed this book. It was a little lengthy at times and at others I was a little lost with all the political and cultural factions that seemed sometimes a bit overwhelming, but overall, I really only have positive things to say about this story and enjoyed the retelling of a classic through a fresh lens and contemporary viewpoints wrapped in vintage clothing. 

Recommendation: If you like Shakespeare, then you should definitely read this. If you don’t like Shakespeare, then you should still read this. It’s a brilliant story for the new and old fans alike and I can’t wait to sink my teeth into the sequel and return to the blood-drenched world of glittering Shanghai and its star-crossed lovers. 

Score: 8/10