Reading Xiaolu Guo's novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (Double Day 2007) gives us a "concise" and funny glimpse of a Chinese "import" to Europe. Zhuang Xiao Qiao, 23, traveled from her hometown, Zhe Jiang, in China to improve her English in London, her "bloody new world." Her parents own a shoe factory, giving her the luxury of leaving home to study the Queen's English.
This is filmmaker Guo's third novel which was drawn from her diary and experiences in London. She was short-listed for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction for the same novel. She was in the long-list in the 2007 Man Asia Prize (where Filipino fictionist, Jose "Butch" Dalisay, was short-listed for his novel-in-progress Soledad's Sister - one of the stories, Woman in the Box, won first prize in the Don Palanca Memorial Awards).
Here are some of the remarkable stories in the novel told in a true-to-form typical Chinese broken English first person narrative:
Upon her arrival in London airport where alien and non-alien people are being "segregated": "I am alien, like Hollywood film Alien, I live in another planet, with frowny looking and strange language."
"Pulling large man-made-in-China-suitcase into hostel, second wheel fall off by time I open the door. (First wheel already fall off when I get suitcase from airport's luggage bell). But anyway, one over-the-sea trip and I lost all the wheels. I swear I never buy any product mande from home town again."
Reading in-progress.
***
I abandoned reading Ian McEwan's novel, On Cheasil Beach, because it is boring. It is one of those novels which you can skip one or two chapters and never get lost in the story. It was a real disappointment. Although it has the same tone as John Banville's The Sea, McEwan's novel lacks spice. His novel, Atonement, however, is raking raves in the movie tills.
I returned Doris Lessing's novel, The Cleft, without reading it because I don't fins it engaging either.
This is filmmaker Guo's third novel which was drawn from her diary and experiences in London. She was short-listed for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction for the same novel. She was in the long-list in the 2007 Man Asia Prize (where Filipino fictionist, Jose "Butch" Dalisay, was short-listed for his novel-in-progress Soledad's Sister - one of the stories, Woman in the Box, won first prize in the Don Palanca Memorial Awards).
Here are some of the remarkable stories in the novel told in a true-to-form typical Chinese broken English first person narrative:
Upon her arrival in London airport where alien and non-alien people are being "segregated": "I am alien, like Hollywood film Alien, I live in another planet, with frowny looking and strange language."
"Pulling large man-made-in-China-suitcase into hostel, second wheel fall off by time I open the door. (First wheel already fall off when I get suitcase from airport's luggage bell). But anyway, one over-the-sea trip and I lost all the wheels. I swear I never buy any product mande from home town again."
Reading in-progress.
***
I abandoned reading Ian McEwan's novel, On Cheasil Beach, because it is boring. It is one of those novels which you can skip one or two chapters and never get lost in the story. It was a real disappointment. Although it has the same tone as John Banville's The Sea, McEwan's novel lacks spice. His novel, Atonement, however, is raking raves in the movie tills.
I returned Doris Lessing's novel, The Cleft, without reading it because I don't fins it engaging either.
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