Guo displays an inclination to make general statements, too. “Family members always hurt each other.” “We repeat ourselves in life — the same habits, over and over again.” “Humans need cages round their bodies — wombs, houses, coffins.” The book’s Hello Kitty aspect, in other words, is quite frequently seasoned with more thoughtful material.
Guo is, needless to say, a rebel, as must be expected of someone who’s emigrated to Europe and is writing for the young. She loves China’s pirated books and films, for instance — piracy, her narrator says, was her university and only path to the foreign world. The police get short shrift — one officer is made to tell another not to worry about Fenfang after she’s been wrongfully arrested. She deserved everything she got because she was “much too individualistic.”
The narrator also belittles the Neighborhood Committees that she feels are spying on her comings and goings. “In my village we used to call them old cocks and old hens. They would sit for hours in the dust, red armbands on their sleeves, serving their everlasting socialism. Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, how I hated them.”
At one point Huizi remarks, “Fenfang, yours is the face of a post-modern woman.” And in a sense this book is an attempt at a post-modern novel — chirpy, observant, clever here and there, and everywhere instantly accessible. The narrator mentions in passing such mentors as Walt Whitman, Tennessee Williams and Marguerite Duras, but this is good post-modern practice — seriousness hinted at, but not investigated. Again, the text is interspersed with black-and-white photos of China — probably taken by the author, as Fenfang remarks on how much she enjoys taking pictures of Chinese daily life.
There are many pert obser-vations in this novel — about pet dogs, strange drinks and weird minor characters. And it’s true that the book as a whole is novelistic fast food. But like so much fast food, it’s not altogether unattractive.
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