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A review by jennybellium
Lost in Translation by Nicole Mones
3.0
Please do not be put off by the title of this book; Nicole Mones's novel has no relation whatsoever to the plotless modern movie. Picked up from the used-book section of Barnes & Noble, Lost in Translation tells the story of a disenchanted American, daughter to a racist congressman, who fled to China to immerse herself in this foreign world.
It opens with the protagonist, Alice Mannegan, serially persuing Chinese men to sleep with. As a translater estranged from her American upbringing, Alice desperately wants to become Chinese-- and seems only to achieve it while engaged in sex.
The story becomes less a 25-cent romance novel with the arrival of an American archaeologist who journeyed to China to recover the long-lost bones of Peking Man. Peking Man, the first (and most complete) Homo erectus specimen ever found in China, was mysteriously lost in the days leading up to WWII. This American archaeologist, Adam Spencer, believes that Peking Man was hidden in the Mongolian desert by the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Thus begins an archaeological adventure story.
It opens with the protagonist, Alice Mannegan, serially persuing Chinese men to sleep with. As a translater estranged from her American upbringing, Alice desperately wants to become Chinese-- and seems only to achieve it while engaged in sex.
The story becomes less a 25-cent romance novel with the arrival of an American archaeologist who journeyed to China to recover the long-lost bones of Peking Man. Peking Man, the first (and most complete) Homo erectus specimen ever found in China, was mysteriously lost in the days leading up to WWII. This American archaeologist, Adam Spencer, believes that Peking Man was hidden in the Mongolian desert by the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Thus begins an archaeological adventure story.