Beijing Doll

Rating:
Summary: Decent debut and coming of age book
Review: "Beijing Doll" reads like the diary of an indecisively boy-crazy teenage girl . Unlike the average youth diarist, however, Chun Sue wrote for music magazines early in her high school career in order to pursue a personal passion and to draw her away from her oppressively strict high school environs. A rock music addict who embraced and wrote about the Beijing punk rock scene, Chun Sue depicts much teenage angst and moodiness in "Beijing Doll," but seemingly fails to grow out of it. Her voice is fickle in the book, but supported with spurts of vague determination and personal strength. Overall, a decent debut and coming-of-age book by a young writer; any later efforts should be more substantial.

Rating:
Summary: Cruel "Doll"
Review: Chun Sue makes a memorable debut with "Beijing Doll," a blistering roman a clef set during Sue's mid-to-late teens. While Sue herself can come across as naive and sometimes unlikable, her raw emotions and confusion make this feel a bit like a real-life Chinese "Catcher in the Rye."

She is a disaffected fifteen-year-old, from a middle-class family in Beijing. Loves punk-rock bands, writes poetry, longs to drop out of school, and struggles with her own feelings of nihilistic despair and pessimism. Soon after the book opens, she loses her virginity to Li Qi, only to find that he has a girlfriend and doesn't love her.

She immerses herself in the rock scene again, and gets involved with a rising indie-rock god/poet, then a Finnish tourist, while going to a shrink, getting magazine jobs and dropping in and out of school -- a merry-go-round of sex, rock, love, and a neverending search for a vague freedom.

"Beijing Doll" was famously banned in China. And it's not surprising -- this isn't exactly a complimentary look at Chinese youth. Chun Sue's story isn't too different from that of many other disaffected teens, but she does bring a lot of unbridled dark energy to it. Her alter ego is a girl who has seen enough to be jaded, but is naive enough to still not know quite how it all works.

Her writing is spare and sharp, with the occasional lapses into poetry. At times the story can get a bit monotonous -- the parade of brief boyfriends tend to blur together, as do Sue's semi-suicidal fantasies. And many older readers will find her angst and complaints annoying. However, Chun Sue does do a good job of capturing the confusion, the contradictions, and the depression of being a teenager.

Chun Sue's alter ego, Jiafu, only grows much at the end; readers might be annoyed with her repeated lapses into relationships with men who use her or have serious issues. However, those who remember the darker moments of teenagerhood will probably identify with her struggles. Maybe not with the vast number of boyfriends, or the pessimism about finding happiness. But the confusion on the inside is striking.

A unique coming-of-age tale, "Beijing Doll" is a peculiar roman a clef, with a mixture of the annoying and the sublime. Dark, wild and weird, but thoroughly unforgettable.

Rating:
Summary: Beijing Doll
Review: Having thoroughly enjoyed "Wild Swans" by Jung Chang and "Red Scarf Girl" by Jiang Ji-Li, I picked up "Beijing Doll" in the hopes that it could show me how modern Beijingers work and live and look at communism. Man, was I ever disappointed.

There's nothing original about Chun Sue's story and very little that's interesting. No wonder she had so much trouble getting the book published -- it reads like an unedited diary. After the (n+1)st run-in with her "bourgeois" parents and the (n+2)nd imploded relationship, the reader may find him or herself wondering if Chun Sue will ever look beyond her own self-absorption or learn from her mistakes.

Rating:
Summary: Wish there was more context
Review: I picked this book up after reading Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (which is excellent, by the way). I guess I was interested in another story of a teenage girl growing up in an oppressive community. However, I don't feel that I get enough feeling for what it's like to be a teenager in communist China, and how her ideals differ from those of her parent's generation. It could just be that I'm not the intended audience--women in China who read this know what it's like, of course. But the result for me is that the story falls kind of flat. I know it's hard to be a teenage girl, having been one myself, and I can certainly relate to that. But without providing any context about her evironment, the book is as cliche as my 10th grade diary. She could be a bratty teenager anywhere.

I also felt there wasn't much character development. I can't keep her various boyfriends straight, because we never learn much about them. We know she's in love with a guy named G. through a lot of the book, but why? We are never given any reason to sympathize with him. I don't even feel I get to know Chun Sue that well. To use a classic writing class critique, she does way too much telling, and not enough showing.



Rating:
Summary: Extremely heartfelt
Review: I really enjoyed reading BEIJING DOLL. I found the author's portrayal of her generation to be extremely heartfelt. The "Cruel Youth" in China are realizing that the values of their parents' generation just don't match their own. So, instead of placing pride in school - they are asking, "What is it all for?" and have decided that having fun is the most important part of being a teenager. This rebellion, when taken in the context of a Communist society, is extremely noteworthy and interesting. I really liked the narrator's voice, as well. She's brutally honest - to the point of opening herself up to much criticism from her conservative (because Communist) countrymen - who eventually banned the book. But she didn't let that stop her from telling her story - which represents the story of millions of people her age - in China and abroad.

Rating:
Summary: OVERRATED
Review: I was very excited to read this book upon seeing the reviews ... I was sorely disappointed. Being in China has absolutely no relevance to this girl's life ... her experiences seem similar to any American teenager attending school. She is middle-class, rebellious, a bit lost in her teen years ... not exactly the most unique and interesting story.

Rating:
Summary: A BIG Disappointment
Review: If there was ever a book that I absolutely disliked, it WAS Beijing Doll. Like the other reviews, I too, agree that this book was totally cliche as well as confusing. Books should show some relation and emotion, but I found Beijing Doll to be flat. I read it on a plane on my way to Disney World for laughs, but I barely laughed; instead, there was a frown plastered on my face for the most part.

Reviewer's Warning: Do NOT read for enjoyment unless you're ready to stumble over Chinese Words and unresolvable instances.

Rating:
Summary: Beijing Doll
Review: This book was okay. She reminded me of myself. It's basically written like a journal, except with dates and all that. If you like those kinds of stories then you'll probably like this book. It was a little hard keeping track of all the guys and who they were to her. And some you don't know how she met.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This was a disappointingly unoriginal account of "teenage angst"...another memoir of a privileged youth with no parental guidance and too much free time to sulk around.

I'm all for this genre, but this book was totally cliche.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent~i like ChunSue~
Review: Why do I like ChunSue? First,She has much passion in her every words. Maybe,someone think is kind of like the journal. But I like the real things...sometimes,i will think about myself when i read her words. I'm from Beijing,Have been US for 8 years.i have the similar experiences in ChunSue's story.I read beijing Doll in both of chinese and english versions. The chinese word make me feel more attractive.