Comparisons to Bright Lights, Big City and other Brat Pack landmarks surround this infamous autobiographical first novel (already banned in China). It's a morose tale of "Loneliness, apathy, misery, helplessness, depression, and self-loathing": the story of Hong, a 17-year-old girl who runs away from her Shanghai school and family in 1986, ending up in the bustling, effectively lawless southern city of Shenzen in China's "New Economic Zone." Hong drifts about, getting into trouble, working briefly as a nightclub singer, exchanging stab wounds with a particularly creepy boyfriend, then losing her virginity to Saining, a conflicted, weak-willed pop-rock guitarist and composer. The pair can neither live together nor apart, as Saining becomes a heroin addict, passing on both his habit and his self-destructive sensibility to Hong, who experiments with numerous ways to further ravage her frail body (she's asthmatic) until she's injured in a gang war and brought back to a Shanghai hospital......
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Approximate Word Count: 307
Approximate Pages: 2 (260 words per double-spaced page) |