Reminds people of the subtle and profound songs of the Shanghai style, and the wet novels of Mei rainy season | Daughter | Youwei
"The Plum Rain Season" reminds people of the subtle and profound psychological novels of the Shanghai style, such as Shi Zhecun's "The Night of the Plum Rain". The charm of such works forms a tradition of hidden beauty. The dampness of the rainy season is more like a spiritual metaphor, with persistent anxiety and difficulty in entanglement. The author Fei Yihe uses authentic Shanghai language to depict a Shanghai family spanning three generations. Under the entire novel lies the arrangement of space and the division of emotions: the eldest daughter Wan Yi lives with her father in the "Upper Corner", while the second daughter Yu Yan and the third daughter Alan live with their mother in Hongkou. The separation and isolation of the family formed two parallel worlds. The three sisters had long separated and had no communication. It was not until their mother passed away that they reunited and began to rediscover and understand each other.
Dad and Mom passed away one after another, taking away the grudges, love, and hate of the previous generation. The novel uses a spider web like structure to depict "family legacy" through the depiction of the mother and father; Through funerals and sacrifices, a return narrative of reunion begins. It contains both biographical story units and a repeated exploration of the past truth. Yuyan and Aran are like pearls and jade worn on Wan Yi's wedge, forming the blooming patterns of the "three female masters". The sisters who have been separated for too long can only rely on conjecture and conjecture to live with each other. They get along carefully. The Mu family was once simplified as a spatial symbol - the word "Hongkou". The empress acted as Wan Yimu's mother, and the love between her aunt and nephew was like that of a mother and daughter. Significantly, sisters reunited and realized mutual information complementation, which was like "reconciliation of intelligence", dispelling the imagination of parents and releasing long-term doubts.
Wan Yi was transferred from an old magazine to a subsidiary company to work as a creative planner, but after switching jobs, she eventually resigned. The changes in personnel have left this career woman physically and mentally exhausted. Anxiety and depression persist, stemming from childhood traumas - the family is broken down, the mother is absent, and there is a lack of emotional communication with the father. The novel attempts to explain the psychological disorders of the characters - Wan Yi's compulsion and cleanliness obsession, indifference towards her husband, and speechlessness. "Over the years, Wanyi has looked at Daming and felt like a father and brother. Looking at their lives again, it's like forming a partnership." He uses an empathy mechanism to analyze the emotional barriers between two generations of mother and daughter, "thoughts of both being daughters and mothers constantly alternate.". Confusion and resentment also have a sense of transmission and reincarnation that transcends generations. Wanyi couldn't understand even more how her mother could tolerate being completely different from her when she thought about her constant concern for Mibo. At the same time, my mother's lifelong anxiety and depression were also caused by my grandfather's corrupt behavior. Wan Yi's experience with her mother includes both spiritual inheritance and environmental similarity.
Fei Yihe captured the deep inheritance of this family fortune. A good novel will focus on exploring hidden causal patterns, not just characters and events. The marriage of the three sisters is full of regrets, which is very meaningful. Dad led his disciple Daming into the house and introduced him to Wanyi. They became a couple and had a daughter named Mibo. Wan Yi's career and marriage may seem successful, but they cannot withstand self-examination. Because Wan Yi did not enjoy maternal love, she was at a loss in the face of her daughter's rebellion. This is because early attachment complexes are forcibly severed, and intimate relationships are difficult to build in adulthood. Alan divorced and died of illness; Yuyan is single and has never met a good fate, which is completely the other side of the story mirror. It constitutes the desolate aesthetics of the long river of fate.
I call it a lament of the same tragedy. Yu Yan is a contradictory combination of deep emotions and intense responsibilities in novels. She is quiet and aloof, introverted and obedient, lonely and inevitably eccentric, restrained and suppressed. Her past was far away from the opposite sex, without a father, lacking love and companionship, and unusually cold. Such a lady, yet hidden in madness. She and Wang Chengwang had an unspeakable fate, falling into an eternal cycle of moral guilt and the desire for love. The author did not simply conduct a "trial", but instead used personal pity to write about a rational and passionate battle - in the end, Yuyan walked out and ended this relationship. She carries complex human inquiries: indulging in desires, how easy it is to fall into them; It's so difficult to bear the pain and give up, and then turn back to know how difficult it is to return. This kind of advice is full of pain and emotion. Even if a man and a woman are "right" in every way, once they betray their virtues, they are like water, moon, mirror, and flower, and will eventually become illusions and illusions.
The three sisters also correspond to three attitudes towards life: ups and downs in the workplace, conscientious family, or self release. The common ground lies in the choice. Yuyan has an unknown background, fruitless love, and unfinished responsibilities. Alan's choice of marriage and career has always been reckless and risky, paying a price. Wan Yi will spend her whole life learning reconciliation. The profound meaning of the novel lies in the need for unity between career, family, and self-worth, but this is almost a perfect ideal.
Novels always explore urban life experiences in the contemplation of the times and geography. "I used to think it was separated by space, but now I realize it's separated by time, appearing unfamiliar and desolate." Although this sentence expresses Wan Yi's lament about the eternal separation of life and death from her mother, it also metaphorically symbolizes her father's emotions towards his old home, which is both distant and unattainable.
The impact of urban space on identity cognition is self-evident. The intergenerational sense between new and old Shanghai people is becoming increasingly blurred in the new era. The once superior mark is like an unidentified brand. The neighborhood is the accumulation of historical consciousness. Even in the dark corridors, there is a musty smell, and the handrails of the stairs are slippery and hard to grip. When walking to the courtyard downstairs, there is also sewage from the small stall. However, Wan Yi never thought of leaving "Upper Corner". The writer touches upon a core question: what is Shanghai style and whether the "Shanghai style" in Shanghai stories can be marked. He wrote that the old Shanghai people have a bit of a taste of not being invaded by water and fire, and not being invaded by oil and salt. In fact, he is talking about the cultural and psychological stability, integrity, and inheritance. The integration of a large number of new Shanghai residents and the younger generation implies an open and inclusive urban attitude and lifestyle. In my opinion, this is exactly the unity and mutual benefit of Shanghai's nature.
What is rare is that Fei Yihe presents the freedom, flexibility, and comfort of male writers when writing about women. This is not only due to the portrayal of female images and female centeredness in the work, but also because the novel conceals the subjective female visual, sensory, and aesthetic aspects. This tradition originated from classicism, such as palace style poetry and boudoir grievance poetry in medieval times, where male poets imitated the psychology of women. I call it the parallax view across genders. Through a shared bath, Ruwan Yi and Mibo felt empathy at the physical level, bringing the psychological distance between mother and daughter closer. Wan Yi's view on the makeup of the empress is clearly like a whisper among women.
The writer casually recalls and reminisces in the current narrative. When Wan Yi and her best friend Mao Mao were doing a massage, she was only momentarily lost in thought before embarking on a long stream of consciousness: the coldness and loneliness of her student days, Mao Mao's past affairs, Mao Mao Mao's mother's instigation and enthusiasm... It was like the "gossip" on a mahjong table, showing off during meals, commenting on the character's family background during gatherings, and all scenes and time flashed back. This is very similar to the last aristocrat, commemorating the last ceremony, which is quite similar to Bai Xianyong's sorrow and Ishiguro Kazuo's recollection. A large number of Shanghai dialects mixed in, make the novel rich in tone, sound and color, and more prominent in texture and posture.
"The Plum Rain Season" recreates the days and nights of Shanghai life, from eating dishes, living and shopping, dressing up to street alleys, restaurants and restaurants, all with delicate layouts. The evaluation and appreciation during this period, through the mouths of the characters, all show the vision and interest of a "lifestyle expert". The three sisters can also be called "the daughters of Shanghai". They are the natural expression of Shanghai's local temperament, concrete and externalized. In my opinion, this is a book of emotional understanding and also a book of self-healing. Fei Yihe is constantly contemplating the state of urban life, how to maintain emotional connections between elders, spouses, and children, adjust psychological positions, and achieve spiritual peace.
"Meiyu Seasons" by Fei Yihe and Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore
