Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is about two teenage boys, Lou, and an unnamed narrator, that are sent to the mountainous region of Southwest China for re-education as their doctor parents are in seen as enemies of the state during the Communist Revolution. The two boys are forced to work in coal mines and rice fields. The work is both hideous and dangerous and their living conditions, horrendous. Here, the possession of literature is a crime and the plot develops around the two protagonists and their ploys to obtain a hidden stash of books, Western classics, translated in Chinese. Their love of literature is woven into, and around their love for the beautiful daughter of a local tailor, the Little Seamstress. Lou, who is a gifted storyteller, reads and then recounts Balzac's, Ursule Mirouet, to the Little Seamstress and thus their young love for each other blossoms and is mirrored in their love of Balzac. As the plot unfolds, the narrator, and the Little Seamstress also fall in love as he cares for her in a time of great need. As the Little Seamstress learns about the world outside and experiences a brush of her certain fate if she were to stay, she leaves the mountains, her father, and the two boys behind and heads to the city. As all intelligent youth leap ahead in a cocktail of idealism, knowledge, and innocence, so too does the little seamstress. As for our two boys, they are left behind, traipsing across beautiful, harsh terrain with buckets of urine and feces. Here they are pushed ever more deeply into the painful realities of adulthood. In addition to the relentless agony of re-education, they have lost the Little Seamstress to the outside world that they brought to her, and now they must survive the crushing force of irony.
regina capobianco
27 September 2015
Review