Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Apparently this book wasn't on my list of things to read.  But it was on my bookshelf.  And it was very thin.  And I thought it was on the list. So I read it.  And now I am going to congratulate myself for completing this little bitty book by posting about it anyway.  So ha!  *I guess I should have made my list more thoroughly*

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a fairly quick read, comprising the story of a year or so in the lives of two Chinese students during the Cultural Revolution. Luo and the narrator (if his name is ever mentioned, I missed it) are sent into the hinterlands to be "reeducated" because their parents are "class enemies."  The book presupposes that you have an understanding of the Cultural Revolution, which I do, but I'd imagine it might be confusing if you had no knowledge of modern Chinese history.  Luo and his buddy spend their time being harangued by the local party boss, carrying shit up a mountain (no, really, shit), and getting friendly with the daughter of the local tailor.  The titular Balzac doesn't appear until halfway into the book, when the boys discover a hidden trove of translated Western classics which they then steal and read.  Luo, now in a relationship with the Little Seamstress (also the only name given for her), decides to read Balzac to her to convert her from a backwards hick into an educated lady.  Ultimately, the Little Seamstress learns a little too well and leaves the mountain, and her stranded companions, to go to the city and make use of her beauty.
The book was beautiful and conveyed character development in a very compact format.  I found the decision to make Luo the only named character very interesting.  Other characters were only called by their professions or nicknames based on appearance.  It reminded me to Julie Otsuka's books, where characters are only ever called Mother, Father, Son, etc.  Having never read Balzac, I'm sure I missed some of the finer points of the novel.  Knowing the literature being discussed isn't essential, but I'd imagine that it heightens the experience of the reader (and lets you feel a little smug for being well read).
I found myself wondering what happened to all the characters.  The narrator is speaking in the past tense and occasionally diverges to talk about how he can still remember something so many years later or how they never thought they would get out... but you never find out how he got out, or what happened to Luo.  I suppose the book was meant to be a small snapshot of a particular time and place, and it succeeded well at that.
I'm not sure if I should take all my college lit classes to heart and start analyzing the meaning of the work.  What does it say about the role of literature in society, etc?  I'm sure there are a lot of reviews out there that do that to much better effect than I could.  I guess I would just say that I thought the interplay of these Western classics in an isolated society was thought provoking.  It's not just that the mountain was isolated and "backwards," but that the Chinese government at the time restricted all supposedly elitist knowledge.  Mao wanted everyone to become like the lowest peasant, which meant that everyone was denied access to education and culture... even the peasants themselves who might have previously had access to it or wanted it.  The boys spent some time recounting movies and, later, literature to the villagers and their reactions to the stories were very interesting.  Were people at the time really so primed for storytelling that a lousy recounting of a North Korean propaganda film could make them cry?  Could a multi-day retelling of the Count of Monte Cristo really keep a man awake at night waiting for the next part of the story?  The fact that that seems foreign to me could be a reflection of my being jaded by modern life... or was the author making the villagers out to be simpletons?  Was the author suggesting that literature is better appreciated by people starved for other sources of "culture"? I'm not sure.
I really enjoyed this book and give it a 9 out of 10.  It's so lovely and such a quick read, I'd argue there's no reason not to read it.