ext_6262 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
puritybrown.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
50books_poc2009-07-13 11:48 pm
puritybrown.livejournal.com) wrote in 50books_poc2009-07-13 11:48 pm
Entry tags:
13-15: 20 Fragments from a Ravenous Youth, UFO In Her Eyes, Blonde Roots
13: 20 Fragments from a Ravenous Youth
14: UFO In Her Eyes, both by Xiaolu Guo
20 Fragments is a revised version of Guo's first novel in Chinese, which she wasn't happy to see translated into English as it was. It's an episodic novel about a young woman who leaves a remote rural village to try and make a life for herself in Beijing. She takes many educational courses, does various menial jobs, gets work as a film extra, has relationships with unsatisfactory men, writes a screenplay that nobody is interested in producing. There's not much of a plot -- it is as fragmentary as the title implies -- but the snapshot vision Guo presents of contemporary Beijing in all its ferment is quite compelling.
UFO In Her Eyes has been reviewed as sf in at least one place, which it doesn't really merit; it's essentially a mundane novel about the "progress" currently sweeping China as seen from the perspective of yet another remote rural village (I'm sensing a theme -- probably because Xialou Guo grew up in a remote rural village). The story is told through documents -- interviews conducted and reports written after a UFO sighting draws the government's attention to this village which has been essentially ignored for most of its existence. The "development" that comes in the wake of the sighting is cruel and indiscriminate and takes no notice of the villagers' own desires, resulting in as much destruction as creation.
Neither of these novels were quite as compulsively readable as A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers or as starkly, austerely perfect as Village of Stone; it seems that Guo reinvents herself with every novel, each time trying out new things. Both of them are excellent, and I recommend them.
15: Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo
This has been reviewed a few times here. A very pointed, funny, and often harrowing satire in a vividly virtuosic style. If it was Africans who conquered Europe and enslaved Europeans, what then? This isn't the only possible answer, but it's a well-imagined and compelling one.
14: UFO In Her Eyes, both by Xiaolu Guo
20 Fragments is a revised version of Guo's first novel in Chinese, which she wasn't happy to see translated into English as it was. It's an episodic novel about a young woman who leaves a remote rural village to try and make a life for herself in Beijing. She takes many educational courses, does various menial jobs, gets work as a film extra, has relationships with unsatisfactory men, writes a screenplay that nobody is interested in producing. There's not much of a plot -- it is as fragmentary as the title implies -- but the snapshot vision Guo presents of contemporary Beijing in all its ferment is quite compelling.
UFO In Her Eyes has been reviewed as sf in at least one place, which it doesn't really merit; it's essentially a mundane novel about the "progress" currently sweeping China as seen from the perspective of yet another remote rural village (I'm sensing a theme -- probably because Xialou Guo grew up in a remote rural village). The story is told through documents -- interviews conducted and reports written after a UFO sighting draws the government's attention to this village which has been essentially ignored for most of its existence. The "development" that comes in the wake of the sighting is cruel and indiscriminate and takes no notice of the villagers' own desires, resulting in as much destruction as creation.
Neither of these novels were quite as compulsively readable as A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers or as starkly, austerely perfect as Village of Stone; it seems that Guo reinvents herself with every novel, each time trying out new things. Both of them are excellent, and I recommend them.
15: Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo
This has been reviewed a few times here. A very pointed, funny, and often harrowing satire in a vividly virtuosic style. If it was Africans who conquered Europe and enslaved Europeans, what then? This isn't the only possible answer, but it's a well-imagined and compelling one.