≫ Download Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth A Novel Xiaolu Guo 9780385525923 Books

Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth A Novel Xiaolu Guo 9780385525923 Books

Download As PDF : Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth A Novel Xiaolu Guo 9780385525923 Books

Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth A Novel Xiaolu Guo 9780385525923 Books

Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth is a small book, but it does provide an insight into a world many of us know so little about, life inside Communist China.

Told in twenty chapters, each a fragment of Fenfang's life, this book is a series of small narratives in the life of this young woman. Growing up in a small village Fenfang sees her future as a never ending farming of the sweet potato fields all around her. Her parents are silent and worn down so Fenfeng decides to pack it all in and head for the big city Bejing. At only seventeen years of age Fenfeng is a little out of her depth, and struggles to survive.

I enjoyed this novella that depicts this determined young woman's search for success. She takes a series of menial jobs slowly working her way into the movie business, playing unnamed woman in non-speaking extra roles. She is at times, brave, scared, brash and submissive. She has a few relationships with men, one a bit of a stalker, another is an American citizen who's slumming and a third that's her closest friend and obviously in love with her. Living in a handful of different apartments, she has some trouble with the Communist Neighborhood Committee; their main purpose is to spy on everyone. Most of these are old school Communists who are looked at with disdain by the younger Chinese who are obsessed with American movies and TV, all DVD's acquired on the Black Market. The clash with the old and new was particularly interesting to me.

Fenfang eventually works her way into writing a screenplay that is accepted for filming, and succeeds in leaving her life on the edges of life behind. Since Xiaolu Guo is a screenwriter herself I have to believe that this is a semi-autographical work, one that at first seems slight but grows on you and makes you wonder about these young people that will be forming the direction of the new China.


Tags : Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth: A Novel [Xiaolu Guo] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. From the author of the 2007 Orange Prize finalist A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers </i>comes a wholly original and thoroughly captivating coming-of-age story that follows a bright,Xiaolu Guo,Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth: A Novel,Nan A. Talese,0385525923,Bildungsromans.,Extras (Actors);China;Beijing;Fiction.,Rural youth;China;Beijing;Fiction.,Beijing,China,Chinese (Language) Contemporary Fiction,Extras (Actors),Fiction,Fiction - General,Fiction Literary,Literary,Rural youth

Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth A Novel Xiaolu Guo 9780385525923 Books Reviews

This translation was published in 2008. It was a revised version of the Chinese original (Fenfang's 37.2 Degrees), which came out in 2000, when the author was 27, and was her first novel published in China. She reworked the original to reflect changes in her thinking about how the main character in it ought to mature.

The work was indeed a collection of youthful fragments, fairly personal compared to works read by older Chinese authors. It was written in the first person and based partly on the author's life in China in the 1990s, from her late teens into her 20s. There were glimpses of her hand-to-mouth existence in Beijing on the fringe of the film world and a few people she met there. Her attempts at education and script-writing, a few relationships, a brief return to her parents' home in a village in southern China, the sale of her first script, and her leaving Beijing. The book didn't mention that the author was seven years older than the narrator's age, had studied film at China's most prestigious film academy and left Beijing for England.

The novel was strongest, in my opinion, at conveying the narrator's determination to get ahead, and what it felt like for her to be young and poor in Beijing. Cheap roach-infested apartments, cheap food, eating at fast-food restaurants to save on electricity bills, crowds, noise, dust, pollution, and so on. Polishing her writing skills, absorbing foreign creations and trying to meet people who could help her. Whenever the novel remained on these things, it was enjoyable. Whenever it strayed, it began to bog down for me.

The narrator's own feelings about things were usually apparent or could be read between the lines, so I could get a clear idea of her. But she didn't seem deeply introspective, nor -- though a perceptive observer of others at times -- did she seem much interested in describing other people, so it was difficult to get a more than superficial grasp of those around her. For instance, a boyfriend was described, a foreigner, but his character and motivations were vague, and nothing was said about how they met or what he meant to her.

The inclusion of photos at the start of each chapter was a great idea and added atmosphere to the book. Also interesting were the mentions in passing of authors she was reading -- Kafka, Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Duras -- and movies she was studying Betty Blue, The Matrix, Casino, Fallen Angels, Sixth Sense, Sliding Doors, Tokyo Love Story, The Lost Weekend, films by Hitchcock. Many of the fragments from her own life were treated as if they were scenes or outtakes from a movie, and the novel could easily be filmed. A Chinese writer mentioned in passing in the book was the late Zha Haisheng (Haizi), an important poet for the post-Mao generations, and his poem quoted in the book might be seen as one key to it.

Excerpts from the book
"In my village, people lived like insects, like worms, like slugs hanging on the back door of the house."

"The snow was black on the ground from the muck pumping out of the chimneys."

"The things about my cockroaches, they were very cinematic, like the birds in that Alfred Hitchcock film. I was under constant attack. Singled out, they were weak and destructible, but collectively they were unbeatable . . . . Once I swallowed one while absent-mindedly drinking my tea."

"I loved piracy. It was our university and our only path to the foreign world."

"This forgotten [English] dictionary might be my passport to the world too."

"Then he asked my age, and I asked his. That's the tradition in China. If we know each other's ages we can understand each other's past. We Chinese have been collective for so long, personal histories are not worth mentioning. Therefore as soon as Xiaolin and I knew how old the other was, we knew exactly what big s--t had happened in our lives."

"I kept my true thoughts, desires and dreams hidden deep within. I became a person who was very good at hiding her emotions. Maybe that was why people thought I was heartless. Apparently my face often had a blank expression."

"Sometimes I would rather look back if it meant that I could feel something in my heart, even something sad. Sadness was better than emptiness."

"Finally I was getting closer to the shiny things."

From the poem by Haizi "From tomorrow, I will be a lucky person/Feed horses, chop wood, travel the world . . . I will have a house facing the ocean; the warmth of spring will blossom/From tomorrow, I will write to my family/Tell them I am settled, I am calm/A warmth will radiate through my life/It will radiate to everyone in this world/From tomorrow, each river and each mountain/Will be given a new and tender name . . . . May your future road be clear and bright/May you be reunited with your true love/May you find real happiness in this dusty world/I will face the ocean, waiting for spring to warm the air and flowers to blossom."
Compared to A Concise Chinese - English Dictionary for Lovers, which was great, Twenty Fragments... reads like a first novel. (Which I found out later it was.) It's immature lead character seems a bit thrown together, yet somehow engaging. Bottom line, I enjoyed it.
I liked the everyday struggle, relating to the feminine, as well as cultural references that show the struggle of youth trying to prosper coming from a desolate upbringing, youth fighting ways of old and survival while never ceasing in pursuing the protagonists dreams.
Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth is a small book, but it does provide an insight into a world many of us know so little about, life inside Communist China.

Told in twenty chapters, each a fragment of Fenfang's life, this book is a series of small narratives in the life of this young woman. Growing up in a small village Fenfang sees her future as a never ending farming of the sweet potato fields all around her. Her parents are silent and worn down so Fenfeng decides to pack it all in and head for the big city Bejing. At only seventeen years of age Fenfeng is a little out of her depth, and struggles to survive.

I enjoyed this novella that depicts this determined young woman's search for success. She takes a series of menial jobs slowly working her way into the movie business, playing unnamed woman in non-speaking extra roles. She is at times, brave, scared, brash and submissive. She has a few relationships with men, one a bit of a stalker, another is an American citizen who's slumming and a third that's her closest friend and obviously in love with her. Living in a handful of different apartments, she has some trouble with the Communist Neighborhood Committee; their main purpose is to spy on everyone. Most of these are old school Communists who are looked at with disdain by the younger Chinese who are obsessed with American movies and TV, all DVD's acquired on the Black Market. The clash with the old and new was particularly interesting to me.

Fenfang eventually works her way into writing a screenplay that is accepted for filming, and succeeds in leaving her life on the edges of life behind. Since Xiaolu Guo is a screenwriter herself I have to believe that this is a semi-autographical work, one that at first seems slight but grows on you and makes you wonder about these young people that will be forming the direction of the new China.