"I have always wanted to leave my village, a nothing place that won’t be found on any map of China . I had been planning my escape ever since I was little. It was the river behind our house that started it. Its constant gurgling sound pulled at me. But I couldn’t see its end or its beginning. It just flowed endlessly on. Where did it go? Why didn’t it dry up in the scorching heat like everything else?"Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth is a novel written like a memoir. It is a gritty coming of age story set in China and takes you deep into the mind of its spirited protagonist, Fenfang.
Fenfang is a twenty something Chinese woman who travels one thousand eight hundred miles from the silence and monotony of Ginger Hill Village to the excitement and risk of urban life in Beijing . She doesn’t want to end up like her mother, picking sweet potatoes for the rest of her life. Instead, she longs to find success as an actress or a screenwriter.
This is a story of escape, of a woman courageously searching for her place in the world and trying desperately to lead a modern life. In Beijing , Fenfang finds “a city that never showed its gentle side.” She becomes a film extra to earn a meager living and is captivated by two young men. Ultimately she gains her independence in an unexpected way and gains the wisdom that only comes from living.
Xiaolu Guo’s voice is like a breath of fresh air in literature. Her narrative is alive and vivid. She succeeds in transporting you to a fragile world far away, providing an intriguing glimpse of daily life and its struggles in post Maoist China.
---Jennifer Rossi
imagineatrium.com
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