Book Review: Dai Sije Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Sijie. Dai. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. Translated from the French by Ina Rilke. Anchor Books. A Division of Random House, Inc. New York. 2000.





Set during the China’s cultural revolution Dai Sijie’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is the tale of two friends Luo and the narrator, (name never gets mentioned) who get sent to work in the coal mines for “ re-education” to the ways of Mao. It is there they become acquainted with the beautiful “Little Seamstress” and both fall in love with her. They also encounter a suitcase of the classics and get transported to the inspirational world of literature. The classic books they read give them the strength and inspiration to survive the harshness of their daily existence in their small village in communist China, where food is scarce, their clothes are lice ridden and people enjoy a an elixir of buffalo blood . Their mutual admiration for the “ Little Seamstress” gives the young men with their first taste of true love, boyish romance and fantasy. The “little seamstress” although very beautiful is just a simple, unsophisticated village girl. It is her lover Lou’s ambition to refine the “ little seamstress” by reading to her the words of Balzac. But in the end, it is the “little seamstress” that is most influenced by the power of literature as revealed when she decides to run away from the village surreptitiously. Confronted by Lou as to why she is leaving the village for the city, she explains,” that she had learnt one thing from Balzac: that a woman’s beauty is a treasure beyond price.” (184).



Dai Sijie pays tribute to the power of literature to influence, transport you to other lands, give hope, nourish the mind and brain cells with intellectual food, and most importantly inspire you to be better than who you are. In Balzac and the Little Seamstress, Dai Sijie´s spins a charming tale of friendship, first love and the suffering of those that experienced communist “ re-education” . Dai Sijie in his simple and short book, has very wisely introduced the historical milieu of China in the seventies. He has done this in a very subtle and circuitous way so that the reader can readily identify with the first whisperings of love and romance and is reminded of their own first impressions of classic literature. Dai Sijie, himself a film-maker was sent for re-education between 1971 and 1974. He has made his home in France since 1984.









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Wordless Wednesdays - Renaissance

Take in Bath, England, August 2009

This Photo is of Pulteney Bridge in Bath, England. Putleney Bridge is modeled after the Ponte Vechio in Florence Italy.These two bridges are the only two in the world that have shops inside the bridge. I can't help but think of the Renaissance when I look at this bridge.

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Book Review: Benito Perez Galdos- Two Tales of Married Women

Fortunata and Jacinta: Two Stories of Married Women by Benito Pérez Galdós

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Galdos is the Spanish Dickens. He's completely underrated and if you like Victorian literature you are certain to like this too.



Galdós, Benito Pérez, Fortunata and Jacinta. Two Stories of Married Women. Translated with an Introductionby Anges Moncy Gullón. The University of Georgia Press. Athens. 1985.

Galdós masterpiece work Fortunata y Jacinta: Two stories of married women is , an accurately drawn social portrait of nineteenth century Madrid. Written in four parts from 1886-1887. According to Turner, who wrote the introduction for Fortunata and Jacinta , the novel is set in the following historical background: Carlist wars, palace of intrigues, the revolution of 1868, an overthrow of the Queen Isabella, the brief reign of Amadeo of Savoy, the abort of the First Republic and the Bourbon restoration ( Alfonso XII ).

The book depicts both the lower class and bourgeois society through two female Fortunata and Jacinta. Galdós weaves a witty, entertaining yet complicated and engaging plot. The story is told between huge dynasties, and close knit families where cousins marry cousins and your next door neighbor is likely to be your relative. Set in Madrid Spain, Galdós true to the tenets of realism, gives the reader an actual true to life portrayal of the shopkeepers, egg sellers, hookers, merchants, clerks, government officials, aristocracy, entrepreneurs, and neighbor all coming and going vibrantly within the stark contrast of the lower, and upper class neighborhoods of Madrid. Galdós powerful use of imagery gives you a feeling of being in Madrid: smelling the smell of hot chocolate and doughnuts, smelling the rain or seeing the mist frost a train window. Hearing the loud mouth vulgar hookers and gypsies that put their hands on their hips, or whether it’s with the bourgeois Santa Cruz family enjoying a night at the Opera at the Royal Theatre of Madrid not so much because they enjoy opera, but because they can afford to go. Perhaps, Barbara Santa Cruz taking a trip to the tailors in Madrid’s finest boutiques to buy the best chambray linen or going shopping to buy the best sirloin and the best tobacco for her husband Baldomero to enjoy on Sundays.

Galdós writing is a great historian much of his writing takes place in the 1870´s, during the Alfonsine era of Spain. Fortunata and Jacinta is such an intellectually rich novel that it can be analyzed on many levels: psychologically, historically, religiously, and even from the feminist point of view. Galdós tells this story in four parts, as each part subsequently unfolds it draws you deeper into the mystery of these interesting, yet all too human and loveable characters. With characters as real and familiar we can not help but recognize ourselves are shortcomings and at the same time our beauty.

What is unique about Galdós, that I haven’t seen in the Russian and French writers is his complete absorption and intricate detail that is at once captivating and intriguing. His narrative structure and style is utterly powerful and mesmerizing drawing the reader, into the unknown world of Madrid Spain in the late nineteenth century, where the use of the phaeton was still in vogue and it was customary for women to wear a flower in their hair. In the introduction of Fortunata and Jacinta, Page after page, Galdós, tells this story and you don’t want to put the book down. This should be required reading for anyone studying World Literature so they can compare with other writers from the realism literary movement like Dickens, and Balzac.





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Book Review: The Second Sex, by Simone De Beauvoir

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

De Beauvoir. Simone. The Second Sex. Translated and Edited by H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.

Simone De Beauvoir, is the writer of many books of fiction including Les Mandarins (The Mandarins,1954); Memoires d'une jeune fille rangée (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, 1958). Her philosophical, existentialist feminist treatise, The Second Sex, was written when she was close friends with existentialists Jean Paul Sartre. In this controversial non-fiction book, De Beauvoir states that women are not the first sex, but the second sex, the “Other.” We are not the first chromosome, we are the second chromosome. She describes women as being in relation to men, not as a separate identity, but existing as an attached appendage. Her book´s treatise and primary purpose was to demonstrate the many myths that have perpetuated throughout history, religion and science that say both directly and indirectly that women, is "the Other", that women are the weaker sex, less qualified for everything under the sun.

For me, when I read The Second Sex, I was utterly fascinated and enthralled. This book gave me a richer foundation from which I can look and revere my own womanhood. It also gives me a more profound sense of pride of being born with two XX chromosomes instead of just an XY.

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