The main thrust of this book is to argue for an East Asian model of comparative literature that emphasizes texts and contexts of the region, while moving away from the existing practice based on either the East–West comparative model or the Eastern text–Western theory application. The author spends a good portion of the book justifying this argument and analyses the pitfalls of the current two approaches commonly practised by students of comparative literature in East Asian studies. She then proceeds to compare 12 selected Japanese and Taiwanese literary texts published between 1960 and 1990 to illustrate her proposed East Asian comparative literature model. This model aspires to develop an alternative theorization of modernity based solely on East Asian colonial and postcolonial experiences without relying on Western theories to articulate the region's accumulated knowledge of its modernization. The book makes important criticism of the current practice of comparative literature and closes the gap between comparative literature and national literature approaches.

Hillenbrand is correct in pointing out the curious phenomenon within East Asian literary scholarship that little effort has been made in intraregional studies. A main reason for this lack of attention, according to the author's analysis, is the perennial preoccupation with the dominant West. In other words, articulations of East Asian histories and identities have always been reliant on comparing and contrasting with the West, regardless of whether the conceptual framework is set to argue for an alternative modernity or to focus on regionalism. What the author aims to accomplish is in fact to bring together alternative modernities and regionalism: “less towards ‘proving’ difference than towards using comparative practice as a means of illustration with the regional frame” (p. 28). In the proceeding comparative analysis of six Japanese and six Taiwanese literary texts, Hillenbrand finds many shared motives and issues – hence proving similarities – to show that her methodology is able to derive a non-West-based common ground upon which to formulate a theory of East Asian modernity. But this is exactly where this otherwise inspiring study falls short. Throughout Hillenbrand's close reading of texts, other than several quite apparent themes (sex/sexuality, the city and consumerism, breakdown of family structure) identified from these texts, there is little theorization of these found commonalities. It is not until the concluding chapter that these commonalities begin to make coherent conceptual sense. The author could have made a more convincing demonstration of her proposed goal if meta-interpretations and theorizations were woven into her textual analysis. In other words, Hillenbrand seems to have no problem pointing out a few common experiences of modernity from her Japanese and Taiwanese texts, but she is far less successful in bringing her findings to a higher level – the theorization of an alternative model of East Asian modernity that she believes an East Asian comparative literature should bring.

Despite this shortfall, the book provides thoughtful arguments on how national studies and regional studies should be brought together. This is particularly important in East Asian studies because the field has always been guided by the paradigms grounded in Western experience. The book also brings attention to important literary texts (such as Huang Chunming's Young Widows [Xiao guafu]) that have not received appropriate critical attention from scholars – texts that should be regularly included in the syllabuses of modern Chinese or Japanese literature classes. Hillenbrand's book will be useful to advanced undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in comparative literature in East Asia and the region's interconnected cultures and literatures. The book can also be a good source of background materials about the region and the historical impact of the US during the Cold War era. The larger perspective inherent in this book is global, while having its focus on the local regional interactions. This is acutely important for the field of Chinese studies as China now is a pivotal player in the international scene, and understanding the historical trajectory on which relevant nation-states such as Japan and Taiwan have travelled can subsequently influence our approach to that region's internal dynamics.

For regional studies such as East Asian studies to incorporate comparative methodology, especially in literature, usually involves applying theories such as culture theories, psychoanalytical theories, and literary theories to the particular region or society in question. The fact that there are not as many intraregional literary studies in which the comparative method is grounded in language and text rather than in theory (such as this book), may be due to the language training given to students of comparative literature in East Asian studies. In some US universities, for example, a secondary discipline is often permitted to take the place of a third language. So East Asian students (who tend to come from the English department or to have a strong training in English in their home country) often opt for theoretical/methodological training in another discipline (i.e. history, anthropology, sociology or film studies) rather than taking language classes to acquire another East Asian language. And other students, for whom mastering an East Asian language is already a lengthy process (not to mention two or more East Asian languages), find theory an obvious choice. Simply put, not only is theory fashionable in today's academic milieu, it is also a lot easier to grasp than, say, Chinese, Japanese or Korean – a simple human factor to be added to the author's explanations for the lack of intraregional literary comparativism in East Asian studies.