Radical: A Life of My Own

Novelist and documentarian Guo (A Lover’s Discourse) pursues “an etymology of herself” in this fragmented and fascinating memoir. Rejecting “overly written, perfectly told yet dead books,” Guo dizzyingly toggles between her native China and New York City, with occasional stops in Europe, to contemplate the influences of romantic love, language, and nature on her sense of self. The main action centers on Guo leaving behind her partner and child in Britain, traveling to New York, and beginning an affair with a man she calls “E.” Guo tells this story matter-of-factly, framing it as an attempt “to make... a female life not trapped by domestic duty and patriarchal constraints.” In addition to her time with E, Guo finds freedom in long walks in the flaneur tradition (“the absence of ‘flâneuse’ in literature reflects the reality that women’s freedom has been and still is limited,” she writes), sojourns with the natural world, and literature, particularly the works of Walt Whitman and postmodernists including Beckett and Foucault. Hyperliterate and formally inventive, this often exhilarating memoir lives up to its title and then some. Photos. Agent: Rebecca Carter, Rebecca Carter Literary. (Sept.)