Books have lighting, I think. And I speak as a dedicated and conflicted reader lured hopelessly away from the page by television and the entire history of film available no w on various sitesβyet some books drop me nicely in the middle, right in between the modes of reading and watching, to live alongside me in the dilemma. The astronaut wanders through the weeds and trees of his dacha before he heads off on his voyage. Yet he is already gone.
We are leaving the earth but that is the earth. And they are laughing about it, too. At their own inconstancy, their changeability. Weeks pass and he never returns. Cuilan treks off mournfully to her ancestral home. Her relatives who have all become mysteriously mangled and wizened since the last time she saw them are hardly welcoming. Then they begin speaking about Wei Bo, which feels inside out, but the world already is. The countryside is destroyed. At night her relatives are in a tree fighting and laughing and one falls, hits the ground with a thud.
She goes out to investigate and everything goes silent at once. Cuilan goes home and is soon walking down the city streets, empty-hearted, when Mr. You, a creep who later turns marvelous , steps up. You deals in rare antiques, especially these very wonderful ancient vases which morph into cavernous spacesβa metonym, it seems to me, for a vagina, which might just be the shape of this world. Time and again the narrative tips us off to the fact that reality is intrinsically female.
Women are connected, women have friends. When he discovers a pair of women, A Liang and Xiao Lan, hiding in a cabinet in his shop just having a conversation we learn the salient fact about Mr. And the broadest interpretation of his lust. Is it praise of his knowledge or is it flirtation.
Soon we are back out on the street. Their children are grown, their love is depleted. Yet they are friends, even admire each other. In regards to love, everyone here is immensely practical and ready to go. Xiao Yuan is a teacher who is obsessed with timepieces that she takes with her on her enigmatic trips.
