Viktors Prusis Prusis itibaren Аптон Уоррен, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire B61 9HE, UK
Well, I'm glad this book didn't get jumbled up in my recent TBR pile purge, and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it. What a great book! I really enjoyed it, and I found the main character, Coco, such an open, sympathetic character. Ok, she was flawed and made mistakes, but that makes her more likeable and human. I think it's such a shame that this book is banned in China, and that they've even burned copies. That's so sad. I recently read another one of these banned Chinese books about a Chinese girl's/woman's experiences - this one was Chun Sue's Beijing Doll, which was all right, but not as good as this book. There was too much of the angsty teenage whine in Beijing Doll. But this one, with her being a little older, twenty-five, is just great. Apparently this is semi-autobiographical. I'd like to read her other books. Set in Shanghai, it's about a girl, Coco, who started off with a stereotypically promising career - out of uni and into a good journalistic job. But she drops out, becomes a waitress, and then drops out of that to live with a drug-abusing boyfriend and write. And she gets involved with this randy German on the side.