Fenfang’s story begins when she is only 17 years old and travels several thousand kilometers from her family home in the province to Beijing to become a movie star. Fenfang is lucky because she manages to get any parts; maybe it’s just a bored waitress or a woman waiting on the platform, not the main character in a blockbuster, but with each of them she is one step closer to fulfilling her dreams.
Fenfang’s everyday adventures constantly oscillate from funny and ironic to depressing. She deals with her boyfriends, nosy neighbors, friends from school and film sets, and even with the miserable cockroaches that take rest in the rice cooker, wondering about the meaning of existence… Despite the economic development and progress, the gray everyday reality of the communist regime is mostly disappointing, and life in a big city is full of emptiness and boredom – but at any time of the day or night a great adventure could happen, for which Fenfang is always ready.
20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth is an unexpectedly light, at times endearingly naive, and at times terrifyingly apathetic story about growing up and confronting dreams with reality. Xiaolu Guo’s first novel was first published in China in 2000, long before she moved to England and switched to writing in English – so if you’ve only read her more recent writings, you might be (positively?) surprised.
