Review of Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo

*Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth* by Xiaolu Guo (2008). Published by Nan A. Talese.

There are some novels that I’ve owned for such a long time. I used to want to consume a lot of Chinese literature, but I think when I was younger I didn’t know how to appreciate that kind of literature.

I find my interests rise and fall throughout the years. When I was younger, I studied Mandarin Chinese intensively. I almost minored in it in college, desperately wanting to go to Shanghai and experience China for myself.

That still hasn’t happened, but I’ll get there eventually. I fell back into Chinese studies after visiting Malaysia in January 2024; the infusion of Chinese culture in Malay and Indian was fascinating to me. I got a grant through my school to buy Chinese books for advanced learning, and the rest is history.

Twenty Fragments, though, I read when I was a freshman in college. I purchased a used copy online after stumbling upon it, and then I read it. I didn’t read much at that point in time; it’s ironic, as I now run a book and movie blog for most of my income.

I was staring at my book stacks when I saw my old copy of Twenty Fragments. I could barely remember the story, so I wanted to read it again. And that’s how we ended up here, with me typing this blog post out.

Let’s get into the review, shall we? I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

A young creative woman tries to learn what it takes to survive in China during the turn of the century.

This book focuses on one young woman: Fenfang Wang. She’s 21 and has just decided to move to Beijing in search of something better than what she had in rural China. She comes from the sweet potato fields, and if she never left her parents and hometown behind, she, too, would be destined for a life of farming.

But when she arrives in Beijing, she had no idea what to really expect. The city is in a transition period between what the Communist regime envisioned and what really happened. There’s a lot of rapid development going on, pushing poor people outside of the homes they historically occupied.

At the same time, Fenfang is pursuing a career in the film industry. She shows up to the auditions, but is shocked that this modern city is exemplifying the same sexist attitudes she experienced while living in the countryside. And at first, there is no luck at all for her in the films though.

Sometimes she gets cast in the same kind of bit parts, but usually Fenfang is shuttered to the side and rejected. The bit parts, which she hypes up to her parents, are little roles that provide some income for her, and she no longer is living in complete and utter poverty. It’s still poverty though.

She makes some friends with a Westerner, who she keeps in correspondence with throughout the course of the book. Fenfang ends up in a push and pull relationship between two different men in the novel, but if we’re going to be honest, she would have been better if she never really associated with these men and focused on her career.

This is a book about modern China I would say. We have a girl literally coming from nothing in the countryside in hopes that she can find something new in the exciting urban sprawl of China. What she finds is that she is going to struggle a lot more than expected getting there, but she has hope.

We might not find hope for her, but she still has it. And that’s enough at the end of the day. Told in twenty fragments, this novel really captures how hungry she is to be someone in this world, even it means sacrificing everything.

Overall Thoughts

Twenty Fragments is a short read, but I find it to be such a compelling one. There’s a reason I haven’t tossed my copy throughout the years and even came back to it. Sometimes I get rid of the books I don’t care for in my collection because my space is limited.

I liked it the first time I read it, and as someone who is a bit older and also in the same situation sometimes as Fenfang, I could relate to it more now. I’m not an urban youth in China, but I tried to make it in New York and still work remotely there in an attempt to keep my connections.

Most people I know have never heard of this book, but I say pick it up if you’re interested in the premise or characters. It’ll probably be worth it! It might be a bit harder to find in a library system though.

Follow me below on Instagram and Goodreads for more.