KEY POINTS:
The first thing that stood out about this book was its layout.
As promised, it's in 20 parts, each detailing an event or related series of events in the life of a young woman named Fenfang, who has moved from the rural south in a village where
"nobody ever talks", to the bustling, grimy metropolis of Beijing.
Each section has a frank, functional subtitle (for example, "Fenfang's village won't be found on any map of China") and a little prefacing photo.
These photos are not very interesting, weighing down the story like little dull blobs of ballast.
I wanted to say that right now because it's basically my only problem with this book.
The adjective "timeless" has been over-used but I can't think of anything better to apply to this book's main character.
A young person flees the countryside hoping for a better life in the big city. Beyond this well-used trope are resonant themes of emigration and lack of communication.
Fenfang is constantly going from place to place - from home to work, from home to a meeting with a director who wants to buy her script, from Beijing back to her home village.
Wherever she goes she meets characters who are either literally silent, or who speak but never say anything, from film industry phoneys to bullying police, from her violently emotionless ex-boyfriend who rings her all the time but never talks, to her long-distance lover, an American graduate student named Ben who spends all his time babbling about the Boston Red Sox and seems oblivious to what she is doing with her life.
There is only one truly communi-cative character in the book, and he doesn't become communicative until the end.
Similarly, the only one of Fenfang's endless, harrowing journeys that seems to get her anywhere is undertaken abruptly in the book's final section - but I've already said too much.
There are several other literary devices, such as a book within the book, that skate close to cliche then jump back.
Too often when we are reading a book from a country like China, still opaque to so many New Zealanders, we are tempted to treat it as a cultural artefact rather than a work of literature. Not a problem with this book.
Twenty Fragments is no more particularly Chinese than, say, Dostoevsky's works are particularly Russian.
Nothing this resonant can evoke feelings of nationality when it's so strongly evocative of feelings of humanity.
* Stevan Eldred-Grigg is a Wellington hist-orian and writer.
- NZ HERALD