Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" by Dai Sijie is a wonderful journey into China during the time of the infamous Cultural Revolution. The story is about two teens that have been sent to the country side for re-education. Both Luo and the unnamed narrator of the book are children from educated families, Luo's dad is a dentist who even worked on Mao Zedong's teeth and the narrator's father was a lung specialist and his mother was a consultant in parasitic diseases. Since both boys had educated parents they were sent to be re-educated.

The journey of re-education is harsh and the villagers are untrusting of all the items the two boys bring to the village. They are allowed to keep a rooster alarm clock and a violin. The boys are sent to watch movies in a nearby town with the expectation of when they return that they would act out the movie in its entirety for the whole village.

The book is about the power of story telling and mostly about the power of the written word.

The boys meet the seamstress' daughter and both fall in love with her. Luo has a relationship with her and decides she needs to be educated to better suit him. The two boys read to her western literature and her eyes are opened to many possibilities.

The two boys and their cache of forbidden Western literature including, of course, Balzac opens their eyes to a new world. The literature proves to be a double edged sword, however, for the boys lose the one thing that was making their life bearable.

I found this book to be a short, easy read with a unique story line but in the end I was left unsatisfied. The story held so much potential but I felt the characters were shallow and undeveloped.

This is a great book if you want to learn a bit more about communist China in the form of novel, as opposed to a dry history book. The characters are interesting and the plot engrossing, especially for someone who can appreciate the contributions of past literature to our lives today. The ending left me a bit confused and there are some parts that don't seem to fit, but the overall themes in the book are thought provoking and Dai Sijie's writing takes you away to a very different world!

This book kept me interested all the way through. Dai paints lovely descriptive pictures with his words. I also liked that the ending was not at all predictable.

I found this book a few years back and absolutely fell in love with the story. Not more than a year later I heard about the movie and had the opportunity to see it...which thankfully was also wonderfully created.

This book is a timeless piece of masterly crafted literature and will be one of my favourite books for many more years to come! I suggest you read this book at least three times in your life!

I can't believe that I am only the second reviewer of this book here online. This was a book that I read for my book club, and one of only a handful that we've all agreed upon that we all thoroughly enjoyed.

This book was very well written. It was an interesting look into China's Cultural Revolution through the eyes of a man who lived it. Very nice writing, indented with subtle symbolism.

This is truly one of my favourite books. I began reading this short novel with somewhat high expectations. Having seen the movie and absolutely loving it, the only reasonable thing to do was to read the book, which turned out to be completely worth while. The story is timeless in that the power of literature will forever have the ability to change the lives of those who desire it to. The characters fear about the future is suddenly eased with the kind words of Balzac and love is allowed to grow with the beautiful reality with which Balzac writes. The little seamstress is forever changed by having met those to be re-educated and her life is ultimately improved with the desire to strive for something more. One of the best books I have every read, with the best moral and the most heartbreakingly honest truth which comes with knowledge and accessability to great literature.