• 1001 BYMRBYD Challenge
  • About Zee
  • Book Challenges 2010
  • Rory Gilmore Reading List
  • Zee’s Book Reviews

Wordly Obsessions

~ … the occasional ramblings of a book addict …

Wordly Obsessions

Tag Archives: 20 fragments of a ravenous youth

Quick Review | ’20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth’ – Xiaolu Guo

22 Sunday Aug 2010

Posted by mywordlyobsessions in 50 Books A Year, Book Review

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

20 fragments of a ravenous youth, 50 books a year, book review, chinese, Fenfang, Groundhog Day, Xiaolu Guo


20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Challenges: 50 Books A Year (no.45)

“Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, isn’t it about time I got my lucky break?”

’20 fragments of a Ravenous Youth’ is the disjointed chronicle of Fenfang Wang; a young woman who leaves the monotonous life of Ginger Hill Village to make it big in one of the most complex capitals of the world, Beijing.

Unlike the other villagers, Fenfang is painfully aware of the hum-drum life of her existence. Days seem to melt into one another, and life feels like a provincial Chinese ‘Groundhog Day’, with her as an anonymous extra. So at 17 she leaves with dreams of becoming a star, of reaching the ‘shiny things’ in life.

Armed with nothing but stubborn willpower, a half-empty suitcase and a headful of dreams; Fenfang lays her tentative roots in Beijing; a city still crippled by its’ communist past. But life has other plans for her. What ensues isn’t a story of success, but one of painful loneliness and desperate survival. Suddenly Fenfang realises that this is how you pay for living in a city with a  population of 15 million. As Fenfang drifts from one dead-end job to another, a bunch of aimless relationships and an ever-growing list of silent, forgettable roles, she wonders whether she will ever make it, or if those ‘shiny things’ were ever be meant for her.

Guo’s depiction of the ‘ravenous’ dreams of youth and the blind courage that issues from this ‘throw-caution-to-the-wind’ attitude was one of the things I enjoyed about Guo’s story. Originally published in Chinese, Guo states that the entire process was spent ‘chasing a language for the elusive Fenfang’ even when she didn’t agree with her protagonist anymore, and indeed with herself.

“Ten years on, I found I didn’t agree with the young woman who had written it. Her vision of the world had changed, along with Beijing and the whole of China.”

And indeed, one gets a feeling that they are reading a much younger, spunkier, arrogant version of themselves. As a woman I could identify with Fenfangs urgent pangs of occasional self-loathing, her worries about her past becoming a suffocating template to her future and moreover the mysterious, distant call to realise one’s destiny, whatever that may be.

But like Guo, I can sympathise and look back in wonder at the ‘crazy years’ of learning life the hard way. Maybe not learning it quite as hard as Fenfang, but the moments where everything seemed like an endless assault course and survival meant dodging the curveballs life threw at you.

For me at least then, the narrative felt like a mash-up between some very familiar feelings and completely alien ones. For one, I loved the candid descriptions of the different districts of Beijing. Fenfang’s indomitable personality was a breath of fresh air, and her first-person account of all the things she sees and experiences is touching. There were more than a few times when I wanted to feel angry at this irresponsible, arrogant youth; but her truthful, wide-eyed innocence prevented me.

“Although Fenfang, the heroine of the novel, should still be desperate about her life, I wanted to convince her to become an adult.”

I like to think of ’20 Fragments’ as a story about the internal struggles of growing up. Namely, curbing our impatience with our surroundings and finding positive, constructive ways to get ourselves out of situations. As the novel progressed, Fenfang began to look inside herself and for once stop obsessing about her peasant past. One of the many lessons she learns is to accept who she is, and that is probably one of the hardest Fenfang has to face considering her Communist upbringing.

Breaking the mold to become an ‘individualist’ in a culture taught to act as a collective whole is no mean feat. Unbeknownst to her, what begins as a journey to distance herself from this ‘collective cockroachism’, brings her even closer to it. How Fenfang deals with it, is part of a story that is familiar to all of us yet different for each of us.

View all my reviews

Share this:

  • Email
  • Print
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Pocket
  • More
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn

Like this:

Like Loading...

RSS Links

RSS Feed RSS - Posts

RSS Feed RSS - Comments

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 636 other followers

Blog Stats

  • 348,920 hits

My Visitors

free counters

Recent Posts

Top Posts

  • Famous Quotes | Edgar Allan Poe
  • 'The Diary of A Young Girl' by Anne Frank
  • Book Review | 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' by John Boyne
  • Book Review | 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold' - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • Book Review | 'Peter Pan' by J.M. Barrie
  • Rory Gilmore Reading List
  • Book Review | 'The Kite Runner' by Khaled Hosseini
  • Book Review | 'In The Miso Soup' by Ryu Murakami
  • Cambridge University Reading Test
  • Book Review | 'The Room' by Hubert Selby Jr.

The best of the best of the best…

Bookish tweets

  • 5 of 5 stars to The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden goodreads.com/review/show/37… 6 days ago
  • @wilson_blesson @discohhh @backrow @RSBNetwork @Ashli_Babbitt @realDonaldTrump I'm saying quit calling white people… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 week ago
  • RT @AlisaValdesRod1: "I don't feel sorry for congress at all. Oh, I'm sorry, did you have to hide under your desk because of guns? Wah wah… 1 week ago
  • RT @Anthrofuentes: This is what it looks like when toxic White privilege is left unchecked "Democracy is fragile. Let's take better care of… 1 week ago
  • @CapriMilanRome @DianeEnsley1 @withsometwist @LiminalLaura @Pamela25978657 @RSBNetwork @Ashli_Babbitt… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 week ago
Follow @WordlyObsession

Pinning stuff on boards is fun!

Follow Me on Pinterest

What’s on the Shelf?

Reading Wishlist!!

WP Book Bloggers List

For finding things…

50 books a year 1001 book list angela carter audiobook Benjamin Lebert book challenge book review books che guevara childrens fiction chinua achebe comic books crazy Dr. Gonzo dystopian edgar allan poe fantasy fear and loathing Fiction frankenstein goodreads gothic fiction Grapes of Wrath gustave flaubert Haruki Murakami hubert selby jr humour hunter s thompson ian fleming Indian literature Its monday what are you reading? japan japanese japanese horror story jm coetzee John Steinbeck Jorge Luis Borges kazuo ishiguro kurt vonnegut l. frank baum literary fiction literature liz jensen love story meme midnights children oscar wilde Paul Auster peter ackroyd poetry readalong religion roberto bolano Robert Rankin romance rory gilmore reading list rum diary ryu murakami salman rushdie science fiction short story stephen king sylvia plath teaser tuesday the motorcycle diaries the rapture Tokyo toni morrison Top Ten Tuesday United States ursula le guin virginia woolf war wondrous words wednesday writing

Blog at WordPress.com.

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
%d bloggers like this: