Record of Regret: A Novel

Coming of age during the Cultural Revolution in China must have been difficult for young people, especially for those like Guangxian who can’t keep his mouth shut. Guangxian’s mouth gets him in trouble, from the affair his father is having to losing his one change at true love. Nothing that Guangxian does seems to do him any good, and nothing good ever happens to him. This is what happens in the new book, for the first time translated into English by Dong Xi. The Cultural Revolution is the background to this luckless, and sometimes hapless, character. We get to see China at the crossroads, as people begin to speak out against what is happening, except, it seems, for Guangxian, who is enamored by the Party slogans and takes them at face value. This is told by an older Guangxian to a younger fellow as he examines the times he came to regret opening his mouth, the mouth that always got him in trouble. Some readers might find the pacing a bit slow, but I find the story overall to be a fascinating look inside China.