By Aerled Doyle
In ‘No Name of My Own,’ the first piece in Yu Hua's focused, riveting and perhaps merciful new collection of stories, there is a character called Mr. Chen who is kind and helps somebody simply because he can.
Don't get used to it.
In the unnamed small towns and cities of this book, we see the same people and the same situations over and over. Weakness meets with mockery; disagreement leads directly to braggadocio and violence; fear translates into disdain.
In most stories, there is a moment when an empathetic word, a willingness to calm down and talk things over with an open mind, could change lives. A moment when one act of kindness could filter the distrust out of the air. With rare exceptions, these concepts may as well not exist here. This is a world without empathy for man or beast.
And yet this is not a cruel book, though it is at times a dispiriting one. Yu himself has plenty of empathy – and pity, never hatred – for his characters. The authorial voice is there, though the prose is so limpid that it feels like reportage, and it's a voice of sorrow. This way go we all without honest human connection or space to grow. This is what it is to be trapped.
In ‘Friends,’ two men brawl for hours “like fighting crickets in the thick of mortal combat,” their struggle absurd but chilling in its detail, yet the conclusion suggests the fighters have more claim to honor than the onlookers. ‘Their Son’ is all struggle: struggle to board a bus, to make a living, to communicate with a son whose selfishness can be traced directly to his upbringing. It's exhausting.
Yet, and this is important, the book is not depressing, and despite the darkness it's a pleasure to read. Yu Hua doesn't do worthiness, and he refuses to be dull. Stories whip along, with sly wit and a keen eye for absurdity of speech and action. ‘Why do I Have to Get Married’ is a comic romp, the feckless narrator understanding too late the snare he has stepped into and discovering that it may be easier to take another man’s wife than express himself clearly.
The shallow, half-smart women and their sly suitor in ‘Sweltering Summer’ are beautifully skewered, figures of fun rather than disdain. Even in the remarkable ‘Timid as a Mouse’, with its tragic inevitability and shocking cruelty, you have to laugh at the sheer brio of some of the selfishness. ‘The Skipping-and-Stepping Game’ is the one off note though, almost comically bleak.
And there's hope. Hope from love perhaps – the wife in ‘Victory’ has no way to express what she feels when she discovers her husband may have a lover, and no tools to understand what he tells her, but all may not be lost. Or from sex, as in ‘Mid-Air Collisions’ when Morning Tang brings a ridiculous group of friends along for support when a wronged husband is after his blood, only for him to get distracted by a pretty girl and forget the whole thing.
Yet the standout story here, ‘Boy in the Twilight’ has no humor and little hope. A starving thief is abused and humiliated by a fruit seller, in the dust of a busy road. Loss begets loss – there are only victims. Sometimes you just have to wait for the cycle to end.
This may be a book about the failure to communicate, but Yu Hua doesn't have that problem. This is another fine book from a writer China is lucky to have, and another book that is going to pass the test of time.
// Boy in the Twilight comes out on Jan 21. For more information, visit randomhouse.com/
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