红楼梦
I have friends and relatives who loves the book, and who follows the offstage stories of the actors. It only makes sense if the story is Star Trek, where fanfares would do costumes, meet the actors 20 years later and wish for a get together next year (ST Picard). It does not make sense if everyone's life is normal person's life and without much happiness.
Yesterday I was raising the question why it is a great book? Even though it is one and only in Chinese, how would it compare to English stories. YQ mentioned he was reading "Gone with the wind" and that was a vast work. I don't believe that a work is great just because it is long, even though Dickens' works are long. I also don't think weird story line is a must. For it is easy to find a novel (Dumas) that has weirder ones. The text itself has inconsistencies, easily one can ask whether there are missing chapters. Is it because too many people are reading it, which is like a currency that gets its value by consensus? I wonder if that was the biggest reason..
YQ mentioned the age question in the book. That kind of makes sense. The oldest prodigy is merely 17 but manages family wealth, life and death of the people. The youngest one is about 9-12 and they all fully understand what it means to live in such a family. 世情, that's the word I had in mind. Politically the family depends on something it has no control of. Economically it might be even worse. If I would make a movie or TV-series, assuming it is 25 episodes, the first 20 would be about all kinds of scariness in the society. Everyone fights for their life and throw away precious things. And only the last 5 episodes would be for the prodigies, their short and happy life, totally worry-free in front of others. The rise and fall must be quick.
It was indeed quick. The story only shows how mature the prodigies are when nobody should notice. And the commenters have to stress out how important every line is. But it is hard for young readers to see anything beyond the love relations. Why would those precious beings punished by life? Why cannot they control their own life? Why is the happy life so short? Then totally ignore how dangerous a society they live in, and how unstable their situation is since the beginning, and how hopeless their future is from the very start.
Prophecies are difficult to get, if the prodigies visited Inferno or hell first, and got prophecies from bloodshed rituals, they would open their eyes and escape sooner.