Rating: 
Summary: Forgettably Brilliant
Review: I picked this book up on a whim at Borders and man oh man am i glad i did. finding interesting reads for my daily commute continues to baffle the hell out of me, but talk about striking it rich this time! the piece is a great mix of history, culture, love and insatiable lust for the written word. two losers in life, because of the hands their country and timeline dealt them, do their best to endure hard living as a result of "re-education" at the hands of peasants during the chinese cultural revolution. somewhere along the way they get their hands on outlawed books and find out what re-education really is. a love triangle eventually ensues between the two voracious readers and a little cutie from the next village over. it begins, reads on, and ends exactly like it should and i can't say anything bad about this book. a refreshing change of pace, i call it forgettable merely because it will never rank among the "classics" this planet holds so dear. feel free to contact me if u have any recommendations for my commute...
Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating story of art surviving the Cultural Revolution
Review: A friend loaned me this book, urging me to read it, which I did in 24 hours and so did my wife. A very good read.The author transported me back in time to 1971 and to a village at the summit of a mountain in China near Tibet where two teenage boys are being "re-educated" as part of the Cultural Revolution led by the Gang of Four. They are being "re-educated" because their parents are medical professionals. The narrator's parents are medical doctors whose crime was that they were "stinking scientific authorities". His friend's father is a dentist who had fixed the teeth of Mao Zedong, Madame Mao and Chaing Kai-shek and whose crime was mentioning their names together in public. The village is surrounded in mist. No electricity, only oil lamps, no vehicles, no commercial activity of any kind, not even a clock--the villagers tell time by sunrise and sunset. The village is illiterate. The villagers work in the paddy fields or the coal mines every day. The teenagers are assigned to a hut on stilts with no furniture other than two beds. Underneath their hut is a "pigsty occupied by a large, plump sow" The Cultural Revolution turns everything around. The narrator, age 17, has a violin ("Wy-o-lin") and he plays a Mozart piece that enthralls the village and which he calls "Mozart Is Thinking of Chairman Mao" so that it will not be considered reactionary.
The Old Miller's song, "Tell me/What does the young nun fear?/She fears the old monk/No more and no less/Just the old monk", becomes "Tell me/Little bourgeois lice,/What do they fear?/They fear the boiling wave of the proletariat." The narrator's friend Luo, age 18, is a great storyteller. To the delight of the village headman, Luo tells stories of films he has seen. The headman then sends the two boys on foot to the small town of Yong Jing, a four day trip, so that they can see the monthly cinema shown there and to retell its story to the villagers. The Seamstress is the very attractive daughter of the only tailor in the district. The tailor is so important that he travels in a sedan chair borne by two bearers followed by a porter carrying his sewing machine. Coal is the primary source of heat. For a few weeks, the boys work naked in a coal mine, with passages so low that they have to crawl. Luo contracts malaria, the first cure for which is whipping him with tree branches. When the still sick Luo arrives at the Seamstress's house she brings in four sorceresses at midnight to frighten the evil spirits from his body. In the midst of this total misery, the boys and the Seamstress are able to find some banned books, secretly owned by "Four Eyes", another boy being "re-educated" in an adjoining village. The first book is Balsac's Ursule Mirouét. Others follow, books by Dumas, Flaubert, Gogol, Melville and Romain Rolland. These books transport them into the nineteenth century where they discover romance and love, emotions banned during the Cultural Revolution. In the privacy of their hut, they tell the story of the Count of Monte Cristo to the old tailor. The tailor then sews blue sailor trousers with "fluttering bell bottoms and whiff of the Côte D'Axur." Five-pointed anchors are embroidered on buttons. A dying preacher is surrounded by his family with a tape recorder pleading: "If you could just repeat one of Chairman Mao's sayings-that would be perfect. Just a few words, or a slogan, go on, try! They'll know their grandfather wasn't a reactionary after all, that he'd put all that behind him!" The only thing the tape recorder catches, however, is a final prayer in Latin. Only after he is promised the Fu Lei translation of Balsac, does the doctor the narrator finds agree to terminate the Seamstress's pregnancy. Fu Lei had been labeled a class enemy. To the Cultural Revolution, Western Culture is like a cancer that must be removed to preserve the Communist Society. As the novel demonstrates, Western Culture has spread too far to be killed. The remnants that remain, however, are indestructible and continue to grow back. Spiritually, the boys are not far from their parents. The narrator uses his knowledge of the medical world to help the Seamstress find a doctor. Luo uses his father's skills to fill a cavity in the headman's tooth. Many of the characters in the book (the boys, the Seamstress, the tailor, the village headman, the doctor, the villagers) are benefited by the transformative power of fiction, whether they read it or hear it from the boys. I too felt its power when I read Sijie's novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting
Review: I went into this book expecting greatness, that was all I had been hearing. But instead I encountered mediocrity. What I like most about the book is that it pulls you into another world. Being able to get inside such an isolated country, especially at such a volatile time, is a rare treat. We the reader get to experience Mao's Cultural Revolution through the eyes of two of its victims.
But other than that I was frankly a little disappointed. There is some nice poetic imagery but the writing is nothing special. It is a translation of a French work, so I will concede that maybe some of the beauty of language was lost in the translation. And I don't want to spoil the book, but it seems the message of the entire story is one that exalts literature and the ideas that it contains. Now the ending of the story seems to completely contradict this solid message and leaves the reading confused and unsure as of how to continue.
But it was still definitely a worthwhile read. Don't worry. It won't take too much time.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed Feelings
Review: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Sijie Dai, presents the story of two young men moved from the city to the Chinese countryside to be re-educated during Mao's Cultural Revolution. The young men discover and read a number of foreign books (forbidden during the revolution), the contents of which captivate their thinking. BLCS is beautifully written and has an evenly flowing prose. It gives a glimpse into the toils and struggles so many in history have had to endure. For the most part, I found reading it relaxing and enjoyable. As a whole, though, I cannot give an enthusiastic recommendation. First, the plot wasn't overly gripping; while I finished it in two sittings, there was rarely a spot where it wouldn't have been easy to put it down. While the narrative contained some twists and turns, it was for the most part linear and often predictable. Ultimately, the story's conclusion left me unsatisfied. I think a word of warning is also in order for those who are sensitive about mature themes. BLCS contains some crudeness and graphic imagery, as well as some explicit sensuality. Additionally, an important component of the plot deals in a matter-of-fact way with a subject that is divisive and many find offensive.
Rating:
Summary: The Joy of Reading
Review: This is a book that all librarians should read. It demonstrates that sometimes a great novel can influence us. This novel takes place during the cultural revolution in China. Two young students are sent to the countryside to be reeducated.One of the young men falls in love with a young woman who is a seamtress in the village. All three are captivated by a suitcase full of forbidden western novels. This story is sweet at times but, not sappy. At times I wanted to shout hurray! I liked it but I have to say that a few people in my reading group did not and thought it was boring. Give it a chance!!
Rating:
Summary: wonderfully written, could not put it down
Review: The beautiful prose pulls the reader into this tale of two bourgeois youth who are sentenced to re-education (manual labor) in the Chinese countryside during the Cultural revolution. Their lives and the lives of those they encounter take an unexpected turn when they encounter a cache of banned books. The fact literature allows mundane lives to transformed is expected. Finding out how the lives will be transformed keeps the reader turning pages until right up to the unexpected ending.
Rating:
Summary: Coming of age in post-Cultural Revolution rural China
Review: Hauling buckets of human excrement up a hillside would hardly qualify as part of an idyllic coming of age for a teenage boy. But caught in this unappealing fate, the two teenage Chinese boys who are the main characters in this novel, undergo a rapid growing up and discover new worlds during their banishment to a rural community in Maoist China. Sons of "bourgeois" parents, they are naturally horrified when they first discover the daily routine to which their "re-education" consigns them. Through their talent for storytelling, they come to entertain and gain favor of the the otherwise autocratic village headman whose whims determine the extent of their toil and drudgery of their daily existence. Soon, they entertain peasants in a nearby commnity. These storytelling sessions with local peasants leads to an encounter a Chinese teenage girl,"the little seamtress" whose father's frequent absences from home allows ample time for the boys to get to know her better. But the coming of age tale in this novel does not simply revolve around this relationship. It is also their perilous encounter with a trunkful of banned foreign novels - including those of Balzac - which open the minds of these two boys to a radically different universe in which passion and grace became a counterpoint to their dreary rural environs. While living with the risk of being caught with this subversive literature, which they stumble upon in the home of another banished youth, the boys learn to negotiate their access to these books, under the watchful and deeply suspicious eyes of the youth's mother who comes to visit her son in the village. This is a charming, warm and highly readable novel, which adds to a growing collection from newly emerging Chinese novelists on life during and after the Cultural Revolution in Maoist China.
Rating:
Summary: Makes you appreciate literature
Review: This book was a joy to read. The book centers around the "re-education" of two young men during the Cultural Revolution in China. One is the son of a successful dentist who "dewormed" Mao's teeth, and the other is the son of a pulminary specialist. Because both boys were educated in western style before the regime, they are singled out, along with other fortunate sons to be re-educated in the mountains with the peasants. They work very long days in the fields, learning the ways of the worker. They befriend a young mountain girl, the Little Seamstress, and experience first love. They also meet another boy being re-educated that has a secret suitcase full of Western literature. The young men read every bit of this contraband material they can get their hands on. It is a wonderful story about the love of literature, and the struggles of growing up. It is a short book (only 170 pages or so) and has been a bestseller for months. It reminds you just how wonderful reading is.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Fable
Review: Balzac the the Little Chinese Seamstress is a wonderful little fable about the transforming power of literature. Two young Chinese boys are sent to isolated mountain village for re-education during the Cultural Revolution. The only remnant of art they bring with them is a violin. They soon discover, however, a hidden treasure of banned Western classics, and that changes everything. Their lives, and that of the young woman they both love, the seamstress, are transformed with some alternatingly bittersweet and comic outcomes. This is a sweet, simple novel. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Fairy tale quality
Review: This narrative has a youthful or childlike quality. Perhaps it's the mountainous ravines, with their brightly colored birds, between the remote Chinese villages. It reminds me a bit of the film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" especially the parts set in rural areas. Brief though it is, it is tightly written so that you get an engaging and informative story about a part of the world that is no doubt unfamiliar to most of us.The two protagonists are upper middle class young men who be sent from the city to the remote villages as part of Mao's Cultural Revolution. They quite literally get the "excrement detail" from the Village Elders. The Village Elder finds these two have a talent for storytelling (and dentistry as well) so they are sent from village to village, reciting movie plots to the rural populace. There is a subplot concerning collecting old Chinese folktales, nearly all of them amorous, from an older gentleman. And of course there is the love story and the critical Western connection in the form of discovered Western classics, read to the rural inhabitants at night, which gives the book its cross-cultural appeal. I would suggest watching the recent release of the film "The Count Of Monte Cristo", which novel receives quite a bit of attention, as educational material connected to this novel. In the end, the little Chinese seamstress decides to move to the city because she is so impressed by the writings of Balzac.
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