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Summary: Large themes treated with a light touch
Review: This is a humorous (at times, wildly so) story played against the grim backdrop of Mao's Cultural Revolution. Two teenage boys are sent to a mountain village for an indefinite period of "re-education," but find freedom through storytelling and literature. When the boys start entertaining the village by acting out films for them, their reputation spreads and they come into contact with the beautiful daughter of a tailor who lives on the mountain. The final act consists of an attempted transformation of the mountain girl into a sophisticated girl through the power of literature (which arrives thanks to a stolen suitcase full of forbidden books). The result is like a slap in the face. Dai Sijie is a film-maker, and this is his first novel. Through Ina Rilke's beautiful translation from the french, the story soars with amusing characters and events, touching on darker themes with a light and wistful touch. I found it delightful.
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Summary: Re-education In Red China
Review: This book is wonderfully written and depicts a scene that is only recently becoming revealed to the West. While it was known that life was difficult in China and all the more so under Mao Zedong, not until recently was it known to what extent; how things seemed almost pointless in so many ways. The Revolution took on meaning for Mao in such a way as to try to purge the country of anything 'Western.' But this book shows, that what he did was really nothing, with respect to what he wanted. All he did was to rid the country of speaking about how people are people everyday and all of their lives. In a sense, we see much the same in Gao Xingjian's Nobel Prize winning "Soul Mountain." A journey is undertaken. Many things are encountered, yet they are on such a basic and visceral level. Probably because in most of China, that is all there is, abject poverty, party officials, and little villages clustered around mountains. How different is the culture of those living in a primarily agrarian society than living in a 'virtual' society. How the concept of making food for the day is no longer something people of the 'West' even consciously think about, mostly, they just think about getting it and eating it. Here the reader is faced with a very different type of life, and a very different type of education or re-education as the case may be. Whatever it may be, the objective of re-education was never realized, because the objective was to change human beings into something that they were not. This attempt was bound to fail from the beginning. And here we see another example of its failure. Western literature reflects societal values and events. They are human events. They will happen in any society. No attempt by any despot to change human nature will succeed. Human nature can only be changed by humans, perhaps one person at a time, but not by anyone other than themselves. Sijie's book makes that point poignantly, and with great aplomb. The book is truly a terrific one, and it reads quickly, but it's point lingers long after the read is finished. It is highly recommended.
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Summary: Fine Writing, But Not Truly A Memorable Story
Review: Although set in the midst of the People's Republic of China's terrible Cultural Revolution, "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" lacks much of the gravitas found in other, more substantial works by contemporary Chinese writers, most notably Ha Jin's "Waiting". Indeed, the author seems to trivialize the worst aspects of this terrible episode in recent Chinese history by using it as the background for his terse tale of two sophisticated urban adolescent males falling head over heels for a simple country girl. The story is often told too abruptly, without building to any meaningful climax or resolution, as though each chapter represents brief vignettes into their lives. The writing is superb, but it is not nearly as memorable as any I've read from the likes of Haruki Murakami or William Gibson to name but a few, and falls short of the quality attained by Ha Jin. Surely it is a pleasant diversion for a quick read, yet there are other, more substantial works in contemporary Chinese literature that are more deserving of the reader's attention.
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Summary: Lovely story
Review: This is a nice and lovely story, easy and quick to read, with a little touch of comedy and romance.
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Summary: Loved this book
Review: Great little book about two students exiled to the boondocks during the cultural revoluation. Excellent writing with a lot of interesting adventures. If you like to learn about how other people live in other places and other times you will enjoy this.
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Summary: an enjoyable read that misses its own point
Review: "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" is the story of two Chinese adolescents being "re-educated" in a mountain village. Together they perform menial labor, try to preserve their perfunctory city education, and meet the beautiful "little seamstress" who lives on the mountain. This is a short, sweet, enjoyable book. The prose is light and easy to read, although it occasionally bears the mark of awkward translation. The story is advanced in a concise, measured way; few short novels are this complex without seeming overloaded. The book is a delight to read: interesting and a bit dark without being obscure or depressing, and full of joie de vivre. The major shortcoming of the book is its abbreviated length. The author affords so little space to each plot segment that it is difficult to distinguish the important themes, and the ending is so sudden that it leaves the reader unsure of what it is supposed to mean, or whether it is supposed to mean anything. The outcome does not, in retrospect, seem inevitable or even understandable. A fuller treatment of the story, including further discussion of the works of Balzac (a French author whose works are referenced but not explained), would make the ending more powerful and provide a more satisfying experience. However, despite this flaw the book is unusual, enjoyable, and interesting.
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Summary: GREAT BOOK! EASY TO READ!
Review: This book takes place on a remote island in china were two boys, Luo and the un-named narrator, are sent to their "re-education" in the cultural revolution. The village headman discovers their talent for story telling and they are sent to the city to watch a film and present an oral presentation to the village and make it as long as the film. They succeed in doing this and they are sent once a month to see a movie in the city afterward. In the city the boys meet the tailor's daughter the beautiful seamstress as people called her. Luo falls in love with the seamstress instantly and they visit her often. Later Luo steals some forbidden western books from a neighbor in the village and they are wrapped up in the stories of the city and love. Luo tries to educate the seamstress with books by Balzac to make her his perfect match. This is a great book I recommend it to 5th graders and up. The book has a great ending and can be read in a day but you will think about it much longer!
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Summary: The Painful Truth Behind Mao's Little Red Book
Review: I read this little jewel in a day and a half. When two bourgeois city boys are sent to a remote mountain outpost to be re-educated during the reign of the Red Guard, they create havoc in the village. The novel is a paeon to absurdity amidst the misery of human experience, part Marx Brothers, part Solzhenitsyn's tales from the gulag. Yes, as other reviewers have mentioned, it is poignant and terribly upsetting. But some of the anecdotes are so hilarious I laughed out loud. The boys play imposters, hoodwink the crafty-evil headman of the village, carry out an unforgettable caper and woo a pretty little seamstress. My paperback version noted that the book is being made into a movie. Not surprising: The whole volume reads like a screenplay. If faithful to the text, the opening scene could be a stunner. It sets the tragi-comic tone of the novel like none I have read in a long time.
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Summary: A quick read, yet the depth reaches several levels
Review: I bought this book only because I needed to add a cost to qualify for free shipping! I chose this based solely on the customer reviews...and glad to say, you are not wrong. This book is EXCELLENT, especially for those of us who love to read and remember those beginning tentative days when we were discovering the magic of reading. The author has managed to make what could have been a traumatizing experience poignant yet humorous. I truly recommend this book.
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Summary: A Gemlike Novel for People Who Love Books
Review: You've probably heard by now what this book is about: It is a story of how two young Chinese city dwellers discover a hoard of great European novels (in Chinese translation, of course) in a remote mountain hamlet during the troublous Cultural Revolution. This was at a time that the ONLY acceptable reading material was Mao's Little Red Book and other suchlike politico-economic tracts. To understand why I love this book, you have to understand that I went to France primarily to see Honore de Balzac's house on the rue Raynouard and his tomb at the Pere Lachaise cemetery -- both in Paris. When I first read OLD GORIOT years ago, I felt as if my eyes were opened for this first time. LOST ILLUSIONS, COUSIN BETTE, URSULE MIROUET and the others merely reinforced this love. Likewise, it was the Waverley Novels of Sir Walter Scott that impelled me to first go to Scotland, and to keep returning. And it was the NJALS SAGA and GRETTIR'S SAGA that took me to Iceland in 2001. The point I am trying to make is that the great stories are capable of enriching your life and casting away your blinders more effectively than anything else I can imagine. Balzac, Bronte, Cervantes, Hugo, Stendhal, Dickens, Tolstoy -- these are names to conjure with. I can think of no better way to bring enchantment and meaning to life than a course of the classics, undertaken with the same sense of awe and wonderment as the narrator, his friend Luo, and the little Chinese seamstress felt in their mountain fastness. Try it sometime. The only comparison I can think of is Ray Bradbury's FAHRENHEIT 451, and -- even more -- Francois Truffaut's film of the same name, with its long tracks and pans across the covers of scores of Truffaut's favorite books as if it were us looking for the last time upon something that was loved, but about to be destroyed forever. Sadly, it's not unimaginable that a day will dawn on which, only in remote areas far from the nightmarish cities, will people of the future will look with wild surmise on the few literary treasures they can find in the dustbin of our civilization. Read Dai Sijie, and then read Balzac. You have to start somewhere. Why not right on top of the mountain named, appropriately, the Phoenix of the Sky?
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