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Loading... Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth: A Novelby Xiaolu Guo
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  deadgirl | Dec 5, 2009 |  Reviewed by Marta Morrison for TeensReadToo.com What is modern China like? What is it like to come of age there? Fenfang Wang grew up living on a sweet potato farm. Her family is uncommunicative and seems to be depressed. There doesn't seem to be much opportunity there in that village. So Fenfang gathers up her belongings at the age of seventeen and heads eighteen-hundred miles to Beijing. There she takes many jobs. She is a cleaner at a hostel, a factory worker, usherette at a movie theater, and finally she becomes a movie extra. She gets many roles, such as woman-walking-over-bridge and waitress-wiping-a-table. She also writes a movie script. She has two relationships with men but they don't seem to be going anywhere and she is constantly hungry. The feel of this story is depressing. The main character is very brave and yet scary. At the beginning of the story, she witnesses a fight between a mother and daughter. They are hit by a car and taken away. Fenfang then just takes over their apartment. No one seems to care. That is the main theme of TWENTY FRAGMENTS OF A RAVENOUS YOUTH, that people just don't seem to care. I would have liked some more explanation of the cultural differences between China and the U.S., because I don't feel that I quite understood all of the nuances of the culture. My daughter lived in Ghana for a year and when she tells a story she needs to explain many ideas and things that she encountered there. This is a short book and would be very enjoyable for those interested in the Chinese culture. (  ) GeniusJen | Oct 13, 2009 | A memoir type recounting of a young 20'ish Chinese girl from a sweet potato farming community who moves to Beijing to get away from the drudgery of her life. She moves from one meaningless job and apartment to another. The chaos and poverty and claustrophobic lifestyle of a large Chinese city continuoulsy intrudes upon the story. The steadiest work the heroine, Fenfang, finds is as a Tv/film extra. A series of nondescript roles-waitress,girl standing on line,etc- reflect the anonymity of her own life. A boyfrined, Xiaolin, gets her this job and she briefly moves into his family's flat-another overcrowded space she can not deal with for long. She also is befrineded by Ben, an Ivyleague ex-pat from Boston who eventually returns home as Fenfang stays behind deciding to try her hand at writing screenplay treatments. Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo. Set in Beijing it is a snappy, catching tale of a 20'ish peasant girl who is determined to "make it" in the big city despite the frustrations she meets moving from one dead-end job and apartment to another. Well worth reading. (  ) berthirsch | Aug 9, 2009 | a modern, fun adventure in beijing. fenfang is a fantastic character, with a voice that is easy to relate to, wanting to know more. i highly recommend this book - it is like a breath of fresh air. ( ) moonstormer | Jul 14, 2009 | The first book by the author of A Chinese Dictionary for Lovers, this short book consists of snippets from the life of Fenfang, who at seventeen has escaped life as a peasant in a small anonymous town where life is always the same and people die with the anonymity of ants. A scrappy little book, interesting for its picture of a young woman's life in a China balanced between the intrusive Communist principles of the interfering elderly and the western materialism of the individualistic young. (  ) pamelad | May 24, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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| Book description |
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From the author of the 2007 Orange Prize finalist A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers comes a wholly original and thoroughly captivating coming-of-age story that follows a bright, impassioned young woman as she rushes headlong into the maelstrom of a rapidly changing Beijing to chase her dreams.
Twenty-one year old Fenfang Wang has traveled one thousand eight hundred miles to seek her fortune in contemporary urban Beijing, and has no desire to return to the drudgery of the sweet potato fields back home. However, Fenfang is ill-prepared for what greets her: a Communist regime that has outworn its welcome, a city under rampant destruction and slap-dash development, and a sexist attitude seemingly more in keeping with her peasant upbringing than the country’s progressive capital. Yet Fenfang is determined to live a modern life. With courage and purpose, she forges ahead, and soon lands a job as a film extra. While playing roles like woman-walking-over-the bridge and waitress-wiping-a-table help her eke out a meager living, Fenfang comes under the spell of two unsuitable young men, keeps her cupboard stocked with UFO noodles, and after mastering the fever and tumult of the city, ultimately finds her true independence in the one place she never expected.
At once wry and moving, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth gives us a clear-eyed glimpse into the precarious and fragile state of China’s new identity and asserts Xiaolu Guo as her generation’s voice of modern China.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:51 -0400)
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Wikipedia in English
The story is basically about a young girl's struggle to find her place in the modern society in Beijing so she can shed off her old "village-girl" self. She is very strong and determined and fearless, yet she has an innocent and naive side of her. There is a lot of loneliness in the story.