Reviews for Beijing Doll

The average rating for Beijing Doll based on 2 reviews is 1.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-08-14 00:00:00 James Marnie Although this book is written like crap, and even though I don't believe it is really a novel but a memoir masquerading as one (the author even uses her own real name as the name of her first-person protagonist!), there still is, I think, inherent documentary value in this look at contemporary Chinese youth circa the late 1990s. Supposedly this book was banned for a short time in China and thus gained some sort of legs among China's disaffected youth, but it's hard to imagine that out of China's 1.3 billion people that this represents the best youth-angst literature the country can produce or that teen author Chun Sue should emerge as a literary beacon of a generation. I'd have to nominate this as the worst "voice of a generation" novel I've read. Throughout the book Chun Sue, a budding rock journalist and school dropout, meets new bands and sleeps with their members, finding virtually all rock musicians to be arrogant jerks (duh!) and gripes about everything and just as often fails to articulate why. On a certain level that might be part of the point (confused, inarticulate youth) but once you get to the stage of writing a "novel" about it--ostensibly from a retrospective, reflective older POV, it becomes a basic expectation of the reader that there be some attempt at articulation and analysis. Otherwise why even write a book? Despite Chun's constant complaining about her "insane asylum of a school" she only gives the vaguest hints of why she calls it that, since the worst that seems to happen is that she can't meet the standard expectations of following school rules and seems baffled as to why her teacher becomes miffed (understandably) when she misses classes. So, like kids anywhere, a half billion Chinese youth think school sucks and can relate to Chun Sue saying so, however unoriginally or un-insightfully. Chun conveys the confusions of the opposing forces of individuality and social conformity well enough, and seems fairly self aware that she and her contemporaries are as often as not poseurs in a society where conformity ultimately defeats all individuality and where rock and roll is a tolerated and more-or-less state-sanctioned and safe outlet for youth rebellion. No different than in the United States, really, where rock and roll is hardly more than a "brand" of fake rebellion or phony transgressiveness; a mainstream, corporate-sponsored way of letting kids think they are rebels while they're being trained to be pliable consumers and social clones; the conventions of being "different" -- see punk, goth, or any other subculture where there's a certain set of codes in fashion, attitude, etc. -- are just other forms of conditioning conformity. The book has incredible shifts of foci throughout. Large swaths of time are often dispatched in a few vague paragraphs. The writing resembles the diary of a relatively thoughtful 12-year-old (though Sue is supposed to be 15-16 for most of the book). There's a certain trance-like quality, though, in the book's repetitive simple-mindedness, and the simplicity of the writing and quickly familiar scenarios make it a lightning-fast read. On page 61, the author gives you an out ("I know there are lots of people who can't stand dark writing with a decadent tone, you know, like writing about yourself as if writing about others. If you're one of them, stop here. I'm not going to force you.") It's an odd passage, but not surprising considering, and if you did stop on page 61 and went no further you'd have gotten the gist of the book by that point. I didn't stop, of course, because it was like the author had thrown down a gauntlet but also because I wanted to see if it was possible for the book to aspire to something greater than merely a calculated and self-conscious exercise in "dark writing with a decadent tone." It never did. -------- (KR@KY 2011, with minor fixes in 2016)

Review # 2 was written on 2007-07-05 00:00:00 Ina Knapper I have issues with first person narratives. I have major issues with first person, female narratives. And first person, female, Asian narratives? Oh, don't get me started. Brand-name this and whine-whine that.... I guess this is supposed to be a coming-of-age type novel about a teenager in China... but there is no growing up done here. Just a bunch of teenage girl angst and whining and trying to be a badass and failing MISERABLY... she just winds up being mostly pathetic and annoying. The most interesting thing about this book is that it was banned in mainland China because, shock and horror, a lot of teenage girls there actually act like the girl in the book - caring little for life and family and instead, chasing the neverending dream of sex, drugs, and (bad) rock music. Just like anywhere else.