I read a whole novel in FRENCH!!!

This morning I finished reading my first French novel. I was very proud. I did get lost from time to time. But thankfully I had a dictionary close by which helped. The novel was written by Dai Sijie and called Balzac et La petite Tailleuse Chinoise. It was set in China during the cultural reveloution. At first it was very odd to hear them speaking French, talk of les guardes rouges, and Mao's Livre Rouge, made me smile. But after I realised it was no more absurd than anything I've read in English I was fine with it.

The story was about two young men whose parents were considered to be, I've forgotten the word for it, basicaly bad and bourgouise, and the sons were therefore "sent down" to the countryside for re-education to learn from the peasants in the village.

(For an amazingly depressing movie on the whole sent down movement you can watch Joan Chen's movie Xiu Xiu the sent down girl. It is one of the most depressing things I've ever seen.)

But I digress, the boys discover French novels, translated into Chinese, that they share with the tailor's daughter in the next village and it leads to some eye-opening ideas. The girl and one of the boys become lovers, he gets sent away, and she ends up pregnant and his best friend has to help her get an abortion. The book ends with her leaving them to go to live in the city. There's a movie based on the book, one of the local shops actually has it but alas it's a vcd which my dvd player doesn't like. Though the movie seemed to stress the romance a lot more as the cover looked a lot more steamy than anything I read in the book. And I don't think my French is that bad!

But reading it was definatly a good way to help my French.