THESE vignettes are indeed fragments: random, unpolished, occasionally sharp, but mostly something to be swept up, trashed and then forgotten.

After her accomplished English-language debut A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers, this translation of Guo's 1988 semi-autobiographical book about a village girl trying to make it in Beijing's film industry seems juvenile and flimsy.

Perhaps lost in translation is the argot which would have made the narrative a refreshing read. Instead, this book is an unremarkable look at the pessimism pervading contemporary China, a subject which has been better tackled in other Chinese works available in English by writers like Wang Anyi and Yan Geling.

That said, there are some fascinating, if fleeting, insights into the plight of modern Chinese youth. On her first day in Beijing, the heroine Fenfang is rejected from hotel after hotel due to her obvious peasant status, but eventually finds free housing when a mother-daughter pair run out of their house quarrelling and are promptly knocked down in a hit-and-run.

Her blase attitude towards occupying a house whose owners have so untimely departed is intriguing, but never fleshed out. It is perhaps a reflection of the dog-eat-dog world of Beijing, or a tribute to the pregnant pauses of Wong Kar Wai films. However, on paper all this does not make for great character development, or even plot.

There might be emotional and psychological gymnastics driving the hunger of this young woman, but the author isn't interested in sharing and, soon, we stop being interested in trying to fill in the blanks ourselves.

If you like this, read: A Concise-Chinese English Dictionary For Lovers by Xiaolu Guo (2007, $32.95 without GST, major bookstores). This time, a Chinese girl goes to London and actually expresses opinions about how she feels.

20 fragments of a ravenous youth
By Xiaolu Guo
Chatto & Windus/ Paperback/
204 pages/$32.65 (without GST)/
Major bookstores/** 1/2