Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress ~ Dai Bijie

Isn't it pretty?!

I bought Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress for its cover.  There.  I said it.  I buy books for their covers and that's that.  Unfortunately, covers don't guarantee contents, and I learned that the hard way.
Don't get me wrong.  This little novel isn't bad, per se, which is exactly why it's taken me around two months to read it.  I read through it at a fairly good pace, nodded, and put it aside.  Overall, it did very little for me.

The novel is narrated by the son of two famous doctors who got on the bad side of Mao in Communist China.  The narrator and his friend, in a similar predicament, get sent to a rural mountain community for "reeducation."  There, they meet another young man in a similar position.  This new friend has piles of forbidden classics in hiding and our young hero proceeds to access them in whatever way he can.  Then he and his friend fall in love with a seamstress's daughter and read to her and get her pregnant.  And then they mourn a janitor, or something.  And then something else happens (I've forgotten what, I'm not just being vague).  And then it ends.

I think that the main problem with this novel is that it's not long enough.  It gives the sense of being a long novel, needing a lot of space and time devoted to the development of the setting, the characters, the situation.  But all that is rushed.  I get no sense of Communist China, no sense of what moves our narrator, no sense of much.  Things happen and it ends and I'm not sure whether I care.  I could feel potential, but in a rush of vagueness, it felt flat.

In addition, there were moments in the novel in which it seemed to forget its place and time altogether.  The two I remember were when the characters talked of a siesta and I felt the need to remind them that they are in a culturally secluded China speaking some form of Chinese.  Another was when the narrator talked about the idea of being a teen mom, but rapidly mentioned that being a teen mom wasn't a possibility in such a way that it wouldn't even be a concept to think of.  It seemed to be making a nod to current American issues without considering its true context.

So yeah, this novel was disappointing.  I didn't dislike it, I just lacked reaction altogether.  That's okay.  At least I have a pretty cover to look at.

I may have a problem

So remember how I gushed on an on about my new literary obsession?  That quickly turned into me racing through Sister Queens, a biography of Katherine of Aragon (AKA Henry VIII's first wife) and her sister, Juana of Castile (AKA that supposedly crazy queen who was locked away by her husband, father, and son), as well as plans for reading Shakespeare's Henry VIII.  Today, I took a trip to Barnes & Noble, and discovered Elizabeth and Mary, which I assumed was about Henry's two daughters who become queens, and immediately began to salivate.  I rushed home to order a cheap copy from Abebooks, and belatedly realized (thanks to the rather obvious caption) that the Mary to which the title referred was not in fact Elizabeth I's half-sister who was queen before her, but her cousin Mary Queen of Scots (who I used to always confuse with Queen Mary and may have thought were the same person).  So, needing to keep my burgeoning knowledge of lady monarchs in chronological order, I quickly found Mary Tudor, a biography of...well...Mary Tudor.  Weirdly enough, I'm fascinated by this particular monarch, because in her younger portrayals on The Tudors, she's just so cute and sweet that I need to know how she turned into the myth that made me scared to go to the bathroom at sleepovers when I was a kid.  Which obviously makes no sense because it's not like that actress is the reincarnation of the real Bloody Mary.  Or is she...

so creepy

NOT sisters

I may be spiraling out of control.  Thank goodness I'm a bargain shopper.

The Awakening ~ Kate Chipin

So I've got a few books backlogged that I've read/listened to, been underwhelmed by, and failed to review.  I shall begin to remedy that here and now with the briefest of reviews.  Today's catch-up post is about The Awakening by Kate Chopin, which I actually finished back in September.  Oops.  Make sure to link up to your review at the end and remember that there is no need to link back.

The Awakening is one of those books that I meant to read for years, but never thought to actually acquire until I stumbled across it at a library sale and bought it for $1 with triumph in my heart.  I assumed that I would love it, it being all feminist-y and what not.  Alas, it failed me.  Here's the quickest plot summary I can muster to get you onto the same page: Edna Pontellier becomes discontented with her role as respectable wife and mother, buys her own house, has an affair, and drowns.  Along the way, she essentially abandons her children and is very racist.

I think the above may be enough to explain my issues with this novel, but I shall delve slightly deeper.  I am a self-identified feminist.  While this comes along with a lot of beliefs, one of those beliefs is that a woman does not need to procreate to be a "real" woman or any such nonsense.  However, slightly separate from this is the belief that no matter who you are, abandoning your children is not okay.  Also, "racist" and "feminist" do not go together in my book.  Okay, technically Edna's not a feminist, but it seems like she's supposed to demonstrate some feminist ideals, which I take great issue with.  Perhaps Edna is depressed, which would excuse her behavior to some extent, but it didn't feel like depression.  It felt like she was simply bored, and decides to fuck up a bunch of people's lives as a result without even the decency of an explanation.  Also, it's really difficult to identify with a character who never calls her children's nanny anything but a "quadroon" (excuse me while I vomit in my mouth).  Edna seems to me to be little more than a child - selfish, impulsive, and all-around unconcerned with the fact that there are people who depend on her and whose lives will be damaged by her behavior.  She is not a feminist figure or a forward-thinking woman, but a spoiled woman with a penchant for making drama.

Bring on the arguments.