I read this book for one of my book clubs and I wasn't that excited about it. I had tried to read it before and it's one of those things where you can tell something bad and graphic is probably going to happen at some point and I just am not that excited about reading those kind of scenes (which is why I'm not a huge modern or best seller reader although I do like some mystery books). Anyway, before when I tried to read it I just decided it wasn't worth it. This time however, I decided to give it a chance and just skip any graphic scenes. And I'm happy to say it wasn't that bad. There's some sex and an abortion but they're not as crazy as I thought. And the whole idea for the book actually turned out to be pretty interesting. It's very ironic and I really liked that part.
Plot: Two Chinese city boys are sent to the boonies to be "reeducated" by the peasants in the Cultural Revolution. They find some smuggled french novels and begin to read them and share them with a peasant girl whom one of them is having an affair with. They really like the ideas of Balzac, Dumas, Bovary and others. They're so liberal and sexually free and different from their experience in China. Ironically though, the girl likes them too, refuses to become the wife of the one boy and leaves them for a "better" life like she read about women having in Balzac. At the end, heartbroken, the boys burn the books themselves, just like the Communists would have done if they'd known about them. Maybe some ideas really are dangerous.
Anyway, an interesting book. I don't know if I'd read it again, or if I would have ever picked it out for myself, but I love irony, and it's definitely ironical and well done.
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