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Owlish
A professor falls in love with a mechanical ballerina in a mordant and uncanny fable of contemporary Hong Kong
With your face covered, sneaking into a city you thought you knew, are you still yourself? Or have you crossed to another world, where the streets are unpredictable and the people strangers, where you might at any moment run into some unknown dream version of yourself?
In a city called Nevers, there lives a professor of literature called Q. He has a dull marriage and a lackluster career, but also a scrumptious collection of antique dolls locked away in his cupboard. And soon Q lands his crowning acquisition: a music box ballerina named Aliss who has tantalizingly sprung to life. Guided by his mysterious friend Owlish and inspired by an inexplicably familiar painting, Q embarks on an all-consuming love affair with Aliss, oblivious to the protests spreading across the university that have left his classrooms all but empty.
The mountainous city of Nevers is itself a mercurial character with concrete flesh, glimmering new construction, and “colonial flair.” Having fled there as a child refugee, Q thought he knew the faces of the city and its people, but Nevers is alive with secrets and shape-shifting geographies. The winner of a 2021 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, Owlish is a fantastically eerie debut novel that is also a bold exploration of life under oppressive regimes.
With your face covered, sneaking into a city you thought you knew, are you still yourself? Or have you crossed to another world, where the streets are unpredictable and the people strangers, where you might at any moment run into some unknown dream version of yourself?
In a city called Nevers, there lives a professor of literature called Q. He has a dull marriage and a lackluster career, but also a scrumptious collection of antique dolls locked away in his cupboard. And soon Q lands his crowning acquisition: a music box ballerina named Aliss who has tantalizingly sprung to life. Guided by his mysterious friend Owlish and inspired by an inexplicably familiar painting, Q embarks on an all-consuming love affair with Aliss, oblivious to the protests spreading across the university that have left his classrooms all but empty.
The mountainous city of Nevers is itself a mercurial character with concrete flesh, glimmering new construction, and “colonial flair.” Having fled there as a child refugee, Q thought he knew the faces of the city and its people, but Nevers is alive with secrets and shape-shifting geographies. The winner of a 2021 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, Owlish is a fantastically eerie debut novel that is also a bold exploration of life under oppressive regimes.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2020
71 people are currently reading
4849 people want to read
About the author
Dorothy Tse
18 books36 followersDorothy Tse Hiu-hung (謝曉虹) is the author of four short story collections in Chinese, including So Black (《好黑》, 2005) and A Dictionary of Two Cities (《雙城辭典》, 2013). Translations of her short fiction have appeared in The Guardian, Paper Republic, The Margins (AAWW) and Anomaly. Her English-language collection Snow and Shadow (2014, trans. Nicky Harman), was longlisted for the University of Rochester’s 2015 Best Translated Book Award, and collects short stories from her earlier Chinese books as well as previously unpublished works.
A recipient of the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature and Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award, Tse also attended The University of Iowa's International Writing Program in 2011. She is a co-founder of the Hong Kong literary magazine Fleurs des lettres, and currently teaches literature and writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.
一九七七年生。
似乎一直在香港生活，但其實只是在有限的幾條街道上重複地走來走去，與固定的朋友互通消息，以及看各種虛幻的新聞。九七年開始寫作，作品收入大陸、台灣及香港等地之小說及散文選集，於○三年出版《好黑》（香港，青文）。
A recipient of the Hong Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature and Taiwan’s Unitas New Fiction Writers’ Award, Tse also attended The University of Iowa's International Writing Program in 2011. She is a co-founder of the Hong Kong literary magazine Fleurs des lettres, and currently teaches literature and writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.
一九七七年生。
似乎一直在香港生活，但其實只是在有限的幾條街道上重複地走來走去，與固定的朋友互通消息，以及看各種虛幻的新聞。九七年開始寫作，作品收入大陸、台灣及香港等地之小說及散文選集，於○三年出版《好黑》（香港，青文）。
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 162 reviews
January 21, 2023
I’ve been looking forward to reading Dorothy Tse’s debut novel for some time. Tse’s an acclaimed, Hong Kong writer whose award-winning poems and short stories often feature alternative versions of Hong Kong, fantastical yet grounded in contemporary reality; frequently boasting uprooted characters who may be nameless or known solely by their initials, their experiences shaped by grotesque or macabre incidents. Her novel occupies similar territory, building on the fascination with transformations and metamorphoses detectable in much of her earlier fiction - tracing back to her interest in fairy tales and the offbeat or surrealistic writing of authors like Xi Xi, Bruno Schulz and Walter Benjamin.
Tse’s story is set in the fictional Nevers – a name that recalls the internment camp where Walter Benjamin was held after the Nazi occupation of France. Like that camp Nevers is a sealed area, its closed borders separating the inhabitants from the outside world. Tse’s depiction of Nevers is a thinly-veiled, stand-in for Hong Kong and its features will be familiar to anyone who’s spent time there or knows its history, her descriptions of Nevers's city centre with its tall buildings and laser light shows are a perfect match for the view over Hong Kong Island at night. Tse’s Nevers was once colonised by the Western Valerians whose language dominated its elite and its educational centres but now it’s been handed back to the “motherland” Ksana which has replaced Valerian and the local Southern (Cantonese) language with its own. At the centre of Tse’s narrative are a low-level, floundering, middle-aged academic Professor Q, his outwardly-ordered wife Maria a high-ranking civil servant and Aliss a life-size, music-box ballerina. Their intertwining experiences form the bulk of Tse’s dream-like, enigmatic exploration of political upheaval, identity and self-delusion.
Professor Q and Maria seem settled, a decent apartment, sufficient finance, and for Q the changing Nevers remains a place suffused with “sunshine, dusty glass and the smell of bank notes.” However, Q has a secret, an erotic obsession with female dolls and automata that he indulges whenever he’s alone. But slowly Q’s world is upturned, there are ominous signs and menacing symbols all around him, a bizarre painting that arrives at his office from an anonymous sender, students disappearing from his lectures, and the weird, underground auction that brings him to Aliss. Meanwhile the rigidly-organised Maria is unnerved by her office rapidly becoming a disturbing site of unexplained disappearances and hints of an appalling fate for the future Nevers.
For the most part, I was quite caught up in this, partly because of my own links to Hong Kong, enjoying its moments of wry humour and absurdist passages. Using fantasy to address political concerns, particularly in contexts where these concerns can’t be directly addressed, is a well-worn tradition from Lao She’s Cat Country onwards, so it’s probably not surprising that this reminded me so strongly of aspects of Yan Ge’s Strange Beasts of China: another recent book indirectly critiquing China’s authoritarian policies. Tse is explicitly building on her own involvement in Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement here. Woven into Tse’s novel are strands from a variety of forms from fairy tale and allegory to Japanese "doll literature", and Greek myth, echoes of Pygmalion and Galatea jostling with threads of Hoffman’s “The Sandman” albeit with an unexpected, grubbily-Nabokovian tinge. In many ways the result’s fascinating and inventive but I also found it a little slippery and sometimes quite heavy-handed, particularly in Tse’s more anarchic closing sections. And I’m not entirely convinced by Tse’s conclusion. But despite my reservations I still think it’s very much worth reading particularly for fans of writers like Yoko Tawada or Camilla Grudova. Translated here by Natascha Bruce.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Fitzcarraldo for an ARC
Rating: 3/3.5
Tse’s story is set in the fictional Nevers – a name that recalls the internment camp where Walter Benjamin was held after the Nazi occupation of France. Like that camp Nevers is a sealed area, its closed borders separating the inhabitants from the outside world. Tse’s depiction of Nevers is a thinly-veiled, stand-in for Hong Kong and its features will be familiar to anyone who’s spent time there or knows its history, her descriptions of Nevers's city centre with its tall buildings and laser light shows are a perfect match for the view over Hong Kong Island at night. Tse’s Nevers was once colonised by the Western Valerians whose language dominated its elite and its educational centres but now it’s been handed back to the “motherland” Ksana which has replaced Valerian and the local Southern (Cantonese) language with its own. At the centre of Tse’s narrative are a low-level, floundering, middle-aged academic Professor Q, his outwardly-ordered wife Maria a high-ranking civil servant and Aliss a life-size, music-box ballerina. Their intertwining experiences form the bulk of Tse’s dream-like, enigmatic exploration of political upheaval, identity and self-delusion.
Professor Q and Maria seem settled, a decent apartment, sufficient finance, and for Q the changing Nevers remains a place suffused with “sunshine, dusty glass and the smell of bank notes.” However, Q has a secret, an erotic obsession with female dolls and automata that he indulges whenever he’s alone. But slowly Q’s world is upturned, there are ominous signs and menacing symbols all around him, a bizarre painting that arrives at his office from an anonymous sender, students disappearing from his lectures, and the weird, underground auction that brings him to Aliss. Meanwhile the rigidly-organised Maria is unnerved by her office rapidly becoming a disturbing site of unexplained disappearances and hints of an appalling fate for the future Nevers.
For the most part, I was quite caught up in this, partly because of my own links to Hong Kong, enjoying its moments of wry humour and absurdist passages. Using fantasy to address political concerns, particularly in contexts where these concerns can’t be directly addressed, is a well-worn tradition from Lao She’s Cat Country onwards, so it’s probably not surprising that this reminded me so strongly of aspects of Yan Ge’s Strange Beasts of China: another recent book indirectly critiquing China’s authoritarian policies. Tse is explicitly building on her own involvement in Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement here. Woven into Tse’s novel are strands from a variety of forms from fairy tale and allegory to Japanese "doll literature", and Greek myth, echoes of Pygmalion and Galatea jostling with threads of Hoffman’s “The Sandman” albeit with an unexpected, grubbily-Nabokovian tinge. In many ways the result’s fascinating and inventive but I also found it a little slippery and sometimes quite heavy-handed, particularly in Tse’s more anarchic closing sections. And I’m not entirely convinced by Tse’s conclusion. But despite my reservations I still think it’s very much worth reading particularly for fans of writers like Yoko Tawada or Camilla Grudova. Translated here by Natascha Bruce.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Fitzcarraldo for an ARC
Rating: 3/3.5
November 3, 2024
At half a century old, all Professor Q wanted was a love affair, a proper love affair, for once in his life. Now that he finally had the chance to put his desires into action, nothing should have been left standing in his way. But things had been happening in Nevers, among them one small, seemingly insignificant thing that would nevertheless have grave consequences for our professor. And those of us here on the sidelines can only sigh, knowing it was precisely because of how completely he abandoned himself to romance that he remained so oblivious to the danger staring him in the face.
Owlish is Natascha Bruce's translation of Hong Kong writer Dorothy Tse's 2020 debut novel 鷹頭貓與音樂箱女孩 (literally the eagle-headed cat and the music-box girl). published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in the UK and Graywolf Press in the US.
Nicky Harman has previously translated a collection of her surreal short-stories, Snow and Shadow, which was longlisted for the 2015 Best Translated Book Award, but this is Tse's debut novel.
Owlish is set in an alternative, thinly disguised, version of Hong Kong, Nevers. Once part of the Valerian (British) Empire, the country was handed over to its larger neighbour to the North, the Vanguard Republic of Ksana (China), where the official language is Northern (Mandarin) rather than the Southern (Cantonese) which is more standard in Nevers, and indeed the Valerian (English) spoken by the elite. The parallels extend to more detailed descriptions of the harbour and other parts of the cityscape.
Alywnne's informative review identifies the link between the name Nevers and Walter Benjamin, an acknowledged influence on the novel - see below - and the same author's afterword also explains the choice of 'Ksana'. Alywnne's review did also make me wonder how much else I'd missed in terms of intertextuality and Hong Kong references.
The story is centred on the figure of Professor Q, a university academic and his rather sick infatuation with his collection of dolls:
The third doll was more crudely fashioned. She was a tiny black girl in a dress that billowed in the style of Marilyn Monroe’s, her hands reaching to press it down. If he hadn’t picked her up, hankering after a glimpse of the delights that lay beneath that windswept skirt, he would never have realized she was a sauce bottle: if you poked your fingers up underneath her clothes, you reached a removable rubber stopper. Her body was porcelain but her head was made of soft, squeezable rubber; Professor Q would pinch and the sauce he’d loaded in, the ketchup or mustard or pesto … well, he could hold her up and watch those different colours gush from inside her, catching them on his finger. He would suck on the finger like a little boy, imagining he was tasting the juices of a real woman.
This goes to another level when he comes across Aliss*, the music-box girl of the original title, who become animate and Professor Q starts an affair with her.
(* the parallel to the name chosen in the English translation Aliss at the Fire of Jon Fosse's Det Er Ales, another recent book from Fitzcarraldo, presumably coincidental. Others in the novel do wonder if the name is supposed to be the Alice, of in Wonderland, or the Elise of Für Elise)
Meanwhile, in Nevers itself, the Vanguard Republic increasingly asserts its repressive influence, leading to student protests at Professor Q's university to which he is oblivious, blinded by his love for Aliss: Love is blind , as the saying goes. Although, in the case of Professor Q, it would be more accurate to say that love had rearranged his vision.
The Owlish of the title is a mysterious friend of Professor Q who he first contacts by phone, but on a five-digit number that should no longer work, then more by telepathy, and finally one suspects Owlish may more be the Professor's alter-ego. It is the name by which he is known to Aliss and he explains to her (linking to the 'eagle-headed cat' of the original title):
If an owl is a bird with a head like a cat, perhaps we should say Owlish is a cat with a head like a bird? To be Owlish is to be a creature somewhere in between a mammal and a bird. To be Owlish is to be a bird that can’t fly, at least not at the moment, but who can climb tall trees and pretend to be a bird, borrowing its nest from other birds. For now, that’s what it must do to survive.
And as the novel progresses, a parallel shadow world starts to emerge, one where Aliss is more accepted than in the human world, and where the authorities suspect the protestors may have fled.
In an afterword, Tse sets out the origin of the novel, explaining that in the 2014 Occupy Movement in Hong Kong the protestors told the people to 'wake up' and that during the 2019 pro-democracy protests, many suggested the protestors were 'dreaming'.
The 2015 BTBA, for which Dorothy Tse's work was shortlisted, was won by Can Xue's Last Lover in Annelise Finegan Wasmoen's translation, and Can Xue's work is perhaps the closest comparison I can think of for Owlish, although Dorothy Tse's work is more accessible. Indeed one could, adapting Can Xue's words , argue that Tse stops at the level of 'dream-writing', or certainly that my reading of it stopped at the level of 'dream reading'.
An intriguing but slightly unsatisfying work - the Professor Q / doll story was rather icky, and the parallels with the situation in Hong Kong, at least those I could pick up, felt relatively unsubtle (but then if they were subtle, I'd have missed them). 3 stars.
Owlish is Natascha Bruce's translation of Hong Kong writer Dorothy Tse's 2020 debut novel 鷹頭貓與音樂箱女孩 (literally the eagle-headed cat and the music-box girl). published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in the UK and Graywolf Press in the US.
Nicky Harman has previously translated a collection of her surreal short-stories, Snow and Shadow, which was longlisted for the 2015 Best Translated Book Award, but this is Tse's debut novel.
Owlish is set in an alternative, thinly disguised, version of Hong Kong, Nevers. Once part of the Valerian (British) Empire, the country was handed over to its larger neighbour to the North, the Vanguard Republic of Ksana (China), where the official language is Northern (Mandarin) rather than the Southern (Cantonese) which is more standard in Nevers, and indeed the Valerian (English) spoken by the elite. The parallels extend to more detailed descriptions of the harbour and other parts of the cityscape.
Alywnne's informative review identifies the link between the name Nevers and Walter Benjamin, an acknowledged influence on the novel - see below - and the same author's afterword also explains the choice of 'Ksana'. Alywnne's review did also make me wonder how much else I'd missed in terms of intertextuality and Hong Kong references.
The story is centred on the figure of Professor Q, a university academic and his rather sick infatuation with his collection of dolls:
The third doll was more crudely fashioned. She was a tiny black girl in a dress that billowed in the style of Marilyn Monroe’s, her hands reaching to press it down. If he hadn’t picked her up, hankering after a glimpse of the delights that lay beneath that windswept skirt, he would never have realized she was a sauce bottle: if you poked your fingers up underneath her clothes, you reached a removable rubber stopper. Her body was porcelain but her head was made of soft, squeezable rubber; Professor Q would pinch and the sauce he’d loaded in, the ketchup or mustard or pesto … well, he could hold her up and watch those different colours gush from inside her, catching them on his finger. He would suck on the finger like a little boy, imagining he was tasting the juices of a real woman.
This goes to another level when he comes across Aliss*, the music-box girl of the original title, who become animate and Professor Q starts an affair with her.
(* the parallel to the name chosen in the English translation Aliss at the Fire of Jon Fosse's Det Er Ales, another recent book from Fitzcarraldo, presumably coincidental. Others in the novel do wonder if the name is supposed to be the Alice, of in Wonderland, or the Elise of Für Elise)
Meanwhile, in Nevers itself, the Vanguard Republic increasingly asserts its repressive influence, leading to student protests at Professor Q's university to which he is oblivious, blinded by his love for Aliss: Love is blind , as the saying goes. Although, in the case of Professor Q, it would be more accurate to say that love had rearranged his vision.
The Owlish of the title is a mysterious friend of Professor Q who he first contacts by phone, but on a five-digit number that should no longer work, then more by telepathy, and finally one suspects Owlish may more be the Professor's alter-ego. It is the name by which he is known to Aliss and he explains to her (linking to the 'eagle-headed cat' of the original title):
If an owl is a bird with a head like a cat, perhaps we should say Owlish is a cat with a head like a bird? To be Owlish is to be a creature somewhere in between a mammal and a bird. To be Owlish is to be a bird that can’t fly, at least not at the moment, but who can climb tall trees and pretend to be a bird, borrowing its nest from other birds. For now, that’s what it must do to survive.
And as the novel progresses, a parallel shadow world starts to emerge, one where Aliss is more accepted than in the human world, and where the authorities suspect the protestors may have fled.
In an afterword, Tse sets out the origin of the novel, explaining that in the 2014 Occupy Movement in Hong Kong the protestors told the people to 'wake up' and that during the 2019 pro-democracy protests, many suggested the protestors were 'dreaming'.
With your face covered, sneaking into a city you thought you knew, are you still yourself ? Or have you crossed to another world, where the streets are unpredictable and the people strangers, where you might at any moment run into some unknown dream version of yourself ? I’m thinking of Walter Benjamin’s obsession with the Parisian arcades. For him, they were a bygone world, a dreamscape divorced from reality, but precisely in that dialectic between dreaming and waking, at the point where the material world and one’s innermost being meet, the past suddenly opens wide to the present and, for a split second–for a ksana, that Buddhist notion of the smallest possible moment–we attain the state of awakening.
The 2015 BTBA, for which Dorothy Tse's work was shortlisted, was won by Can Xue's Last Lover in Annelise Finegan Wasmoen's translation, and Can Xue's work is perhaps the closest comparison I can think of for Owlish, although Dorothy Tse's work is more accessible. Indeed one could, adapting Can Xue's words , argue that Tse stops at the level of 'dream-writing', or certainly that my reading of it stopped at the level of 'dream reading'.
An intriguing but slightly unsatisfying work - the Professor Q / doll story was rather icky, and the parallels with the situation in Hong Kong, at least those I could pick up, felt relatively unsubtle (but then if they were subtle, I'd have missed them). 3 stars.
July 2, 2023
“Most of the group had lived all their lives in this coastal territory called Nevers, located to the south of Ksana. Nevers had been built up by the kingdom of Valeria and ruled by her for a hundred years, developing first on Valeria Island and then expanding to the Ksanese peninsula across the harbour. Nowadays, the city was looking well past its prime. Skyscrapers thrust upwards like lethal weapons, and, at fixed times every evening, a light show started up on both sides of the harbour, laser beams strafing the water and blinding passers-by.”
Owlish takes place in the city of Nevers, which is a very thinly disguised Hong Kong, Tse’s home. It is a fairy-tale and nothing is quite as it seems. It is a political allegory and also manages to encompass a typical male mid-life crisis (well, typical if you include falling in love with a life size female automaton in the form of a ballerina called Aliss typical). It is clear though that we are dealing with real life events, even if there is a hint of dystopia and the surreal. The man, Professor Q is fifty and a university professor. His wife Maria is a very well organised civil servant. He has a rather odd friend, it seems, called Owlish.
There are all sorts of references to other works, a multiplicity of them. I can do no better than point you towards Alwynne’s review which captures the essence of this better than I can:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
It’s interesting, although I felt it lost its way towards the end, although again that may be the point. Nothing is as it seems.
‘He turned, noticing a dressing-table with a three-way mirror. He went over to it and sat down. He had no interest in looking at his own ageing face; what he wanted was for the mirror to give him a clearer view of the church interior. But rather than making the room more visible, the mirror dragged everything out and chopped it up, creating a chain of overlapping images, making a two-dimensional world into something as grand and complex as a pipe organ. Perhaps the astonishing thing was not that he had lived so many years in Nevers without knowing that such an island, or such a church, existed, but rather that, in all the cities he had lived before, there had never been a place like this one – somewhere willing to accept him and all his treasures. Treasures he had been gathering like secrets, gorgeous, resplendent things, which were now in the mirror before him, replicated, larger than life. Aliss was there too, reborn many times over, watching him from inside all those parallel worlds. Her gaze no longer scared him. In fact, her eyes felt the way the sun does in dreams: encouraging, nourishing of everything that the dull, tasteless, real world chooses to forbid.’
Owlish takes place in the city of Nevers, which is a very thinly disguised Hong Kong, Tse’s home. It is a fairy-tale and nothing is quite as it seems. It is a political allegory and also manages to encompass a typical male mid-life crisis (well, typical if you include falling in love with a life size female automaton in the form of a ballerina called Aliss typical). It is clear though that we are dealing with real life events, even if there is a hint of dystopia and the surreal. The man, Professor Q is fifty and a university professor. His wife Maria is a very well organised civil servant. He has a rather odd friend, it seems, called Owlish.
There are all sorts of references to other works, a multiplicity of them. I can do no better than point you towards Alwynne’s review which captures the essence of this better than I can:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
It’s interesting, although I felt it lost its way towards the end, although again that may be the point. Nothing is as it seems.
‘He turned, noticing a dressing-table with a three-way mirror. He went over to it and sat down. He had no interest in looking at his own ageing face; what he wanted was for the mirror to give him a clearer view of the church interior. But rather than making the room more visible, the mirror dragged everything out and chopped it up, creating a chain of overlapping images, making a two-dimensional world into something as grand and complex as a pipe organ. Perhaps the astonishing thing was not that he had lived so many years in Nevers without knowing that such an island, or such a church, existed, but rather that, in all the cities he had lived before, there had never been a place like this one – somewhere willing to accept him and all his treasures. Treasures he had been gathering like secrets, gorgeous, resplendent things, which were now in the mirror before him, replicated, larger than life. Aliss was there too, reborn many times over, watching him from inside all those parallel worlds. Her gaze no longer scared him. In fact, her eyes felt the way the sun does in dreams: encouraging, nourishing of everything that the dull, tasteless, real world chooses to forbid.’
September 5, 2022
Do Not Enter. Do Not Run. Do Not Proceed. Do Not Retreat. Do Not Talk. Do Not Anything, Everything Is Forbidden.
This story situates itself in a long tradition of using fable, fairy-tale and fantasy as subversion, a way to encode repression, tyranny and oppressions in a seemingly innocuous way to evade censorship - it's storytelling as a form of resistance.
What I like about this is the multiple echoes of key names and elements which create diverse intertextual links: Nevers (Hong Kong), for example, reminded me of Never Never Land (Peter Pan) and Aliss of Coppelia (the ballet based on a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann) as well as the automata of Nabakov's King, Queen, Knave. Before that, there are the classical myths of Pygmalion and his statue (named Galathea in a later tradition) - and Ovid's Metamorphoses seems a particularly potent intertext here, as the poem itself uses cover of myths to expose the abuse of power of the Augustan regime.
There are places where the absurdist fantasy hits the spot, others where I was lost, and I don't think this completely comes together with coherency by the end. Some of the politics on e.g. British colonialism seem laboured - but this is still an interesting read for the way it articulates struggle via dreamlike and fantastic narrative.
Thanks to Fitzcarraldo Editions for an ARC via NetGalley
February 13, 2023
An original, weird and thoughtprovoking political novel criticising China's takeover of Hongkong. Our main character, the strange Professor Q, starts an affair...with a mechanical doll...
It started out very intriguingly and it's very well written (and translated), but as the story evolved I increasingly felt I was missing important points. It must be full of symbols and references, but missing those it became a slightly incoherent tale for me, especially the last 60 pages.
Not being too familiar with the conflict and not too well-versed in Asian literature, I feel that I have not been able to take from this novel all it has to offer. It is the type of book where a book club read with knowledgeable people could easily add a star.
For now 3,5.
It started out very intriguingly and it's very well written (and translated), but as the story evolved I increasingly felt I was missing important points. It must be full of symbols and references, but missing those it became a slightly incoherent tale for me, especially the last 60 pages.
Not being too familiar with the conflict and not too well-versed in Asian literature, I feel that I have not been able to take from this novel all it has to offer. It is the type of book where a book club read with knowledgeable people could easily add a star.
For now 3,5.
May 13, 2023
Publication date: June 6, 2023. There is much underlying symbolism that I did not fully understand, yet I was strongly drawn to its lyrical, mysterious tone and completed my reading in one sitting. Mid life crises, unfulfilled dreams, yearnings for something more, interspersed with guns, soldiers, political unrest all come together in the world of a middle aged professor. Very worthwhile read.
My thanks to the author, Dorothy Tse, and the publisher, Graywolf Press, for my ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. #Goodreads Giveaway
My thanks to the author, Dorothy Tse, and the publisher, Graywolf Press, for my ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. #Goodreads Giveaway
March 17, 2023
2.5 (half a point for the lovely narration).
I have a feeling that I'm missing a lot of metaphors in this novel. As a story it is bewildering, as a metaphor its even more confusing.
Professor Q is having a mid-life crisis. His career and marriage are stagnant. His home country is in flux having been ceded back to its original controllers ten years before. His escape is in a doll collection that he keeps hidden in his study. He finds gratification in dressing and playing with the dolls but that desire becomes out of control when he becomes the owner of Alliss, a life size ballerina doll.
Here's where I started to get lost, mainly because you are never sure what is real and what is dream.
I listened to the audio version and I had to keep going back on what I'd just heard because sometimes the end was so abrupt that I was positive is missed something crucial. After much deliberation I think Dorothy Tse has left so many open ends because life is like that. I understand that Nevers is a metaphor for Hong Kong and its current state of turmoil. No one really knows what will happen there or what is happening to its citizens.
We are left wondering what happened to Alliss, Professor Q and his wife. I am also still bewildered as to whether Owlish was a real person or just another facet of Professor Q's personality.
It's an interesting read. Writing this review (such as it is) has given me more of a headache than listening to the book. I'm definitely intrigued by Dorothy Tse and will search out more of her work.
I have a feeling that I'm missing a lot of metaphors in this novel. As a story it is bewildering, as a metaphor its even more confusing.
Professor Q is having a mid-life crisis. His career and marriage are stagnant. His home country is in flux having been ceded back to its original controllers ten years before. His escape is in a doll collection that he keeps hidden in his study. He finds gratification in dressing and playing with the dolls but that desire becomes out of control when he becomes the owner of Alliss, a life size ballerina doll.
Here's where I started to get lost, mainly because you are never sure what is real and what is dream.
I listened to the audio version and I had to keep going back on what I'd just heard because sometimes the end was so abrupt that I was positive is missed something crucial. After much deliberation I think Dorothy Tse has left so many open ends because life is like that. I understand that Nevers is a metaphor for Hong Kong and its current state of turmoil. No one really knows what will happen there or what is happening to its citizens.
We are left wondering what happened to Alliss, Professor Q and his wife. I am also still bewildered as to whether Owlish was a real person or just another facet of Professor Q's personality.
It's an interesting read. Writing this review (such as it is) has given me more of a headache than listening to the book. I'm definitely intrigued by Dorothy Tse and will search out more of her work.
August 19, 2024
Nebulous......
Tse writes a story set in an alternate Hong Kong, a story floating in the reality of suppression, beatings, disappearances and the dreams. Dreams of an erotic life, dreams of a loving life, dreams of a connected life.
But are the suppressed the only ones dreaming. Are the suppressors dreaming too?
I ended up in a sort of a 'never' land, which is quite fitting considering this alternative Hong Kong was called Nevers. Where I was I was not sure, neither was I sure of what to think of what I was reading.
An ARC gently provided by publisher/author via Netgalley
Tse writes a story set in an alternate Hong Kong, a story floating in the reality of suppression, beatings, disappearances and the dreams. Dreams of an erotic life, dreams of a loving life, dreams of a connected life.
But are the suppressed the only ones dreaming. Are the suppressors dreaming too?
I ended up in a sort of a 'never' land, which is quite fitting considering this alternative Hong Kong was called Nevers. Where I was I was not sure, neither was I sure of what to think of what I was reading.
An ARC gently provided by publisher/author via Netgalley
April 17, 2023
A few of my GR friends have helpfully teased out some of the intertextual references in this (to Galatea, to Hoffmann, to Ovid), but though often a sucker for intertextuality, I couldn’t warm to Owlish. It left me in a state of part confusion, unsure if I had missed a chapter somewhere, and part complete indifference at a clichéd tale of a university professor and his midlife crisis with a robot/doll who may have… a soul?
There were some decent set pieces, some nice writing about a fictionalized Hong Kong that might have moved me more if I knew Hong Kong, some decent attempts to humanize the doll, but none of this broke through the barrier of my resistance to caring about the story. I am left genuinely puzzled as to why Tse wanted to tell the story of Hong Kong and its recent troubles through this lens. Occasionally it all tips into the land of fairy tale and magic, but even this failed to arouse my interest.
I was probably more interested in the contraband urban plan for the Nevers of twenty years from now than I was in anything in the plot.
2.5 stars because it’s not badly written.
There were some decent set pieces, some nice writing about a fictionalized Hong Kong that might have moved me more if I knew Hong Kong, some decent attempts to humanize the doll, but none of this broke through the barrier of my resistance to caring about the story. I am left genuinely puzzled as to why Tse wanted to tell the story of Hong Kong and its recent troubles through this lens. Occasionally it all tips into the land of fairy tale and magic, but even this failed to arouse my interest.
I was probably more interested in the contraband urban plan for the Nevers of twenty years from now than I was in anything in the plot.
2.5 stars because it’s not badly written.
May 17, 2023
Format: audiobook ~ Narrator: Jennifer Leong
Content: 3.5 stars ~ Narration: 5 stars
Complete audiobook review
Owlish is quite a weird (audio)book. It is a surreal fairytale about a professor of literature named Q. His marriage and career aren’t perfect. Quite the opposite.
Professor Q has a collection of dolls and one day, he gets a new specimen for his collection. He is given a large music box with a ballerina doll inside. After some time, he starts an affair with this life-sized doll. The story takes place on a cultureless island called Nevers.
The story contains elements of ETA Hoffman’s, The Sandman. In this short story, a young man falls in love with a mechanical doll. But Owlish is not only a retelling of this story. It is also a political allegory. Nevers, where this story takes place, is a contemporary Hong Kong.
While I usually really like surreal stories, this was only ok. But the reason for this may be because I failed to understand the story in detail as I didn’t know enough about the past events in Hong Kong’s history. So, I recommend reading about the history of Hong Kong before you read this. It helps to understand the political aspect of the story.
Thanks to Fitzcarraldo Editions Audio for the ALC and this opportunity! This is a voluntary review and all opinions are my own.
Content: 3.5 stars ~ Narration: 5 stars
Complete audiobook review
Love is blind, as the saying goes. Although, in the case of Professor Q, it would be more accurate to say that love had rearranged his vision.
Owlish is quite a weird (audio)book. It is a surreal fairytale about a professor of literature named Q. His marriage and career aren’t perfect. Quite the opposite.
Professor Q has a collection of dolls and one day, he gets a new specimen for his collection. He is given a large music box with a ballerina doll inside. After some time, he starts an affair with this life-sized doll. The story takes place on a cultureless island called Nevers.
The story contains elements of ETA Hoffman’s, The Sandman. In this short story, a young man falls in love with a mechanical doll. But Owlish is not only a retelling of this story. It is also a political allegory. Nevers, where this story takes place, is a contemporary Hong Kong.
While I usually really like surreal stories, this was only ok. But the reason for this may be because I failed to understand the story in detail as I didn’t know enough about the past events in Hong Kong’s history. So, I recommend reading about the history of Hong Kong before you read this. It helps to understand the political aspect of the story.
Thanks to Fitzcarraldo Editions Audio for the ALC and this opportunity! This is a voluntary review and all opinions are my own.
April 29, 2023
This is a strange and deliciously unsettling dystopian story that can be enjoyed on different levels.
As a satire on the political situation in Hong Kong it is clever, though perhaps sets the reader off on a search for hidden meanings which might distract from the humour and sheer outrageousness of the various goings-on.
Professor Q is a lecturer in literature at the Lone Boat University in the city of Nevers, in a mountain valley south of Ksana and previously occupied by the Valerian Empire for a hundred years before being handed over to the Vanguard Republic.
Professor Q is a very private man. He has just had his 50th birthday, and has yet again been overlooked for promotion. Any passion in the relationship with his wife Maria has long gone, though they remain amicable. His only source of pleasure in his drab existence is his secret collection of dolls, for which he trawls the antique markets of the town. In one, he unearths a porcelain music box ballerina named Aliss.
To his delight, his love for Aliss is reciprocated when the doll comes to life. With the help of his friend Mr Owlish, he creates a love nest on a concealed island where he and Aliss can conduct a passionate affair. Unbeknown to Q though, he has become a target for suspicion, and is being watched by government forces.
There comes a stage in the second part of the book where without the reader realising it, the story has evolved from a bizarre character study to a harrowing portrayal of life under a repressive regime.
There’s more than a hint of Angela Carter about this, when she is at her most devious, as in Doctor Hoffman for example.
The contrast between artistic charm and nightmarish horror is Tse’s greatest skill. The story is completely addictive. Its conclusion was unexpected, and even distressing. It wasn’t the way I hoped it would end, and is in some ways the novel’s weakest part. But that doesn’t take anything away from a very different and enjoyable reading experience.
Here’s a clip..
As a satire on the political situation in Hong Kong it is clever, though perhaps sets the reader off on a search for hidden meanings which might distract from the humour and sheer outrageousness of the various goings-on.
Professor Q is a lecturer in literature at the Lone Boat University in the city of Nevers, in a mountain valley south of Ksana and previously occupied by the Valerian Empire for a hundred years before being handed over to the Vanguard Republic.
Professor Q is a very private man. He has just had his 50th birthday, and has yet again been overlooked for promotion. Any passion in the relationship with his wife Maria has long gone, though they remain amicable. His only source of pleasure in his drab existence is his secret collection of dolls, for which he trawls the antique markets of the town. In one, he unearths a porcelain music box ballerina named Aliss.
To his delight, his love for Aliss is reciprocated when the doll comes to life. With the help of his friend Mr Owlish, he creates a love nest on a concealed island where he and Aliss can conduct a passionate affair. Unbeknown to Q though, he has become a target for suspicion, and is being watched by government forces.
There comes a stage in the second part of the book where without the reader realising it, the story has evolved from a bizarre character study to a harrowing portrayal of life under a repressive regime.
There’s more than a hint of Angela Carter about this, when she is at her most devious, as in Doctor Hoffman for example.
The contrast between artistic charm and nightmarish horror is Tse’s greatest skill. The story is completely addictive. Its conclusion was unexpected, and even distressing. It wasn’t the way I hoped it would end, and is in some ways the novel’s weakest part. But that doesn’t take anything away from a very different and enjoyable reading experience.
Here’s a clip..
Lately, he seemed to have been sleeping for increasingly extended periods. He would fall silent during meals, his head bowed as though intently contemplating the cauliflower florets in his soup, and she would know that he was sound asleep. In those moments he looked meek an innocent, and she clung to the sad yet at the same time consoling thought that andropause had come for him. Old age was nigh.
December 17, 2022
134th book of 2022.
2.5. Kinda wild. A midlife crisis and an affair with a (living?) doll. Social commentary not-so-thinly veiled, a good dash of surrealism and floaty prose. A nice mix of stuff but nothing came together exceptionally. When Tse publishes again I'll be there, as a debut, this gives a lot to think about. Some bits are uncomfortable with the fist-sized dolls licking our 50-year-old protagonist to completion, but Tse did keep me generally engaged, even when I was a little taken aback. Reminiscent of Murakami in many ways I think, but nice and refreshing to read something surreal and weird, about sexualised women (young women too, and literally very small and childlike women), not written by Murakami, or any other man, for that matter. May add some more thoughts but it's late and I have work in the morning.
This isn't published till early next year. Thanks to Fitzcarraldo for the ARC.
2.5. Kinda wild. A midlife crisis and an affair with a (living?) doll. Social commentary not-so-thinly veiled, a good dash of surrealism and floaty prose. A nice mix of stuff but nothing came together exceptionally. When Tse publishes again I'll be there, as a debut, this gives a lot to think about. Some bits are uncomfortable with the fist-sized dolls licking our 50-year-old protagonist to completion, but Tse did keep me generally engaged, even when I was a little taken aback. Reminiscent of Murakami in many ways I think, but nice and refreshing to read something surreal and weird, about sexualised women (young women too, and literally very small and childlike women), not written by Murakami, or any other man, for that matter. May add some more thoughts but it's late and I have work in the morning.
This isn't published till early next year. Thanks to Fitzcarraldo for the ARC.
December 6, 2023
Ein rätselhaftes, schwebend beklemmendes Buch, dessen Sound mich manchmal an Kafka erinnert hat (es gibt eine Verhaftungsszene, die mich vermuten lässt, dass das sicher kein Zufall ist), aber auch auf so eigenwillige Weise Traum, Tagtraum, Wunschtraum, Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit, Erotik, Politik, Phantastik und Satire miteinander verwebt, wie ich es so noch nicht gelesen habe.
Angesiedelt in einer fiktiven Inselstadt, die Hongkong zum Verwechseln gleicht, lässt sich ein Professor, akademisches Fußvolk, auf eine Affäre mit einer Puppe ein. Lachhaft, könnte man meinen, wenn ihr Refugium nicht auch der Zugang zu einer Welt wäre, die auch jene Herren interessiert, die eine Protestbewegung niederschlagen wollen.
Hierzulande liegt der Roman “nur” als Buchclub-Ausgabe vor, aber ich kann Gutenberg, Litprom e.V. und dem Übersetzer Marc Hermann gar nicht überschwänglich genug danken, diesen Schatz für deutschsprachige Leser/innen zugänglich gemacht zu haben.
Angesiedelt in einer fiktiven Inselstadt, die Hongkong zum Verwechseln gleicht, lässt sich ein Professor, akademisches Fußvolk, auf eine Affäre mit einer Puppe ein. Lachhaft, könnte man meinen, wenn ihr Refugium nicht auch der Zugang zu einer Welt wäre, die auch jene Herren interessiert, die eine Protestbewegung niederschlagen wollen.
Hierzulande liegt der Roman “nur” als Buchclub-Ausgabe vor, aber ich kann Gutenberg, Litprom e.V. und dem Übersetzer Marc Hermann gar nicht überschwänglich genug danken, diesen Schatz für deutschsprachige Leser/innen zugänglich gemacht zu haben.
June 7, 2023
This book honestly unlocked something within me because I was obsessed. I don’t mean that in a weird way but just something about the campus setting and really strange character of Professor Q and his poor wife Maria had me completely hooked throughout.
Owlish follows an professor who despite having a young and gorgeous wife finds himself completely enamoured by a wooden ballerina doll he sees in the window of an antique shop. He buys her and begins a wild affair with the doll, turning him so mad he begins to forget about his university work and he becomes blind to the protests and civil rights riots happening around him at the campus. It is such a strange but enthralling book I could not put it down. The obsession in it reminded me a lot of Lolita in how he looked after the doll and also parts of the writing did to. I really recommend this for fans of Lolita but also people who want a strange and slightly surreal lit fiction book that will leave you confused and breathless.
I’m so glad I enjoyed this one more than I thought I would, literally binged most of it in one day. It cleverly comments on the political cultural movements in Hong Kong without directly mentioning it which is interesting to read about.
Owlish follows an professor who despite having a young and gorgeous wife finds himself completely enamoured by a wooden ballerina doll he sees in the window of an antique shop. He buys her and begins a wild affair with the doll, turning him so mad he begins to forget about his university work and he becomes blind to the protests and civil rights riots happening around him at the campus. It is such a strange but enthralling book I could not put it down. The obsession in it reminded me a lot of Lolita in how he looked after the doll and also parts of the writing did to. I really recommend this for fans of Lolita but also people who want a strange and slightly surreal lit fiction book that will leave you confused and breathless.
I’m so glad I enjoyed this one more than I thought I would, literally binged most of it in one day. It cleverly comments on the political cultural movements in Hong Kong without directly mentioning it which is interesting to read about.
April 13, 2023
Some really good stuff in here, but mixed with far too much that is just totally weird and baffling. A good chat at Borderless book club brings it up to a 3* rating, but I still feel like something was missing, preventing it from fully coming together.
May 12, 2023
Owlish begins as a thinly veiled discussion of life in Hong Kong, the memory of British colonialism, and the increasing role and power of mainland Chinese influence. Yet Tse soon brings in an element of fantasy and interweaves these dream-like sections with depictions of police brutality and suppression of education and self-governance.
There are echoes of both Pygmalion in Metamorphoses and Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita throughout the novel, with Tse masterfully dancing between an imbalanced romance and a growing sense of insanity.
However, certain parts of the novel are stronger than others, with Maria’s sections by far being a standout amongst some chapters that occasionally seemed to lose their way. At points the fantasy sections became absurdist and lost both my understanding and interest, and had me repeatedly checking how much I had left to read.
The denouement, too, was underwhelming. With such varied plot lines through the novel, I hoped for some clarity and a sense of tying it all together. But what I experienced instead was the feeling of Tse gesturing at a pile of plot and just saying ‘here you go’.
I understand Tse’s intentions with introducing fantasy into social commentary as a way of showing a different face of the oppression with which Hong Kong natives are familiar and - in a two-birds-with-one-stone manoeuvre - simultaneously evading censorship. But it could have been executed more eloquently.
Thanks to Fitzcarraldo Editions for an ARC via NetGalley
There are echoes of both Pygmalion in Metamorphoses and Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita throughout the novel, with Tse masterfully dancing between an imbalanced romance and a growing sense of insanity.
However, certain parts of the novel are stronger than others, with Maria’s sections by far being a standout amongst some chapters that occasionally seemed to lose their way. At points the fantasy sections became absurdist and lost both my understanding and interest, and had me repeatedly checking how much I had left to read.
The denouement, too, was underwhelming. With such varied plot lines through the novel, I hoped for some clarity and a sense of tying it all together. But what I experienced instead was the feeling of Tse gesturing at a pile of plot and just saying ‘here you go’.
I understand Tse’s intentions with introducing fantasy into social commentary as a way of showing a different face of the oppression with which Hong Kong natives are familiar and - in a two-birds-with-one-stone manoeuvre - simultaneously evading censorship. But it could have been executed more eloquently.
Thanks to Fitzcarraldo Editions for an ARC via NetGalley
March 11, 2023
I understood about 3% of this book. Enjoyed it very much.
March 11, 2023
Rating 3/3.5
I am unsure what to make of this.
It's fascinatingly intertextual and stands in dialogue with many literary schools and techniques. It has elements of chinese fable, and yet also plays into the Hoffmann/Ovid idea of the inanimate doll, beloved by a human, come to life.
The setting is a very thinly veiled Hong Kong in conflict with China, whereby Tse only really chose to change the names of places, but kept nearly everything else.
The story of Professor Q and Aliss, his beloved ballet dancer doll is a bit unnerving, as it has Nabokovian 'Lolita' elements of the lustful older man, and I found some of the eroticism a bit strange and 'icky'- but this is clearly intentional, and at times even darkly funny. (There is a very graphic scene concerning a doll that is a sauce bottle which the Professor sometimes.. uses).
I honestly don't know where I stand with it. I did enjoy what I read, but i feel like it demands a reread to fully make sense. Or maybe i was just too tired this week to fully apreciate it!
I am unsure what to make of this.
It's fascinatingly intertextual and stands in dialogue with many literary schools and techniques. It has elements of chinese fable, and yet also plays into the Hoffmann/Ovid idea of the inanimate doll, beloved by a human, come to life.
The setting is a very thinly veiled Hong Kong in conflict with China, whereby Tse only really chose to change the names of places, but kept nearly everything else.
The story of Professor Q and Aliss, his beloved ballet dancer doll is a bit unnerving, as it has Nabokovian 'Lolita' elements of the lustful older man, and I found some of the eroticism a bit strange and 'icky'- but this is clearly intentional, and at times even darkly funny. (There is a very graphic scene concerning a doll that is a sauce bottle which the Professor sometimes.. uses).
I honestly don't know where I stand with it. I did enjoy what I read, but i feel like it demands a reread to fully make sense. Or maybe i was just too tired this week to fully apreciate it!
March 14, 2024
There were part of this that I thought were wonderful, but it didn't quite tie together for me, and the last 20 pages lost me. I struggle with wild fantasy and surrealist plots that abandon their own rules.
But before it reached that point I enjoyed the thinly disguised visions of Hong Kong, Britain and China and their respective languages, the spectrum of humanity between humans, mechanical humans and dolls, and the multiple identities Professor Q assumed, the ambiguity of Owlish, his origin in the south, his acquisition of language, his journey in a box and his emergence, much like Aliss's. I saw Q's doll fetish as a metaphor standing for the false and unequal relationships between the British and other foreigners with Hong Kong, the Chinese and the Hong Kong citizens, and Q's marriage.
I didn't understand what Tse intended with the bird references, sounds or the name Owlish. Is it a symbol associated with HK or other literary references?
I liked the richness of the different meanings and associations, but I suppose that even though I'm happy for meanings, metaphors, plots and characters to remain unresolved, the wildness of the ending weakened the novel for me.
But before it reached that point I enjoyed the thinly disguised visions of Hong Kong, Britain and China and their respective languages, the spectrum of humanity between humans, mechanical humans and dolls, and the multiple identities Professor Q assumed, the ambiguity of Owlish, his origin in the south, his acquisition of language, his journey in a box and his emergence, much like Aliss's. I saw Q's doll fetish as a metaphor standing for the false and unequal relationships between the British and other foreigners with Hong Kong, the Chinese and the Hong Kong citizens, and Q's marriage.
I didn't understand what Tse intended with the bird references, sounds or the name Owlish. Is it a symbol associated with HK or other literary references?
I liked the richness of the different meanings and associations, but I suppose that even though I'm happy for meanings, metaphors, plots and characters to remain unresolved, the wildness of the ending weakened the novel for me.
November 10, 2022
Owlish's blurb sounded interesting and I'd say the writing itself was enjoyable, but I guess I didn't get the full picture nor the connections between the history of Hong Kong and mainland China and Professor Q's private and work life. It seemed more that Q was having an issue with getting older, never receiving the academic accolades he desired nor sexual satisfaction from his marriage with Maria. I wasn't able connect the dots between all of what was going on.
I personally found the "erotic/dreamlike" encounters with his dolls icky. I understand his longing for the young and beautiful, but as a professor who deals with students on a daily basis, it made me quite uncomfortable. I found Maria's parts way more interesting than Professor Q's in and out of dreams and reality.
So altogether, this wasn't a hit for me personally.
Thank you Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.
I personally found the "erotic/dreamlike" encounters with his dolls icky. I understand his longing for the young and beautiful, but as a professor who deals with students on a daily basis, it made me quite uncomfortable. I found Maria's parts way more interesting than Professor Q's in and out of dreams and reality.
So altogether, this wasn't a hit for me personally.
Thank you Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.
October 3, 2024
trochu bizarní, ale symbolické vyprávění o profesorovi Q, majiteli hromady knih a sběrateli panenek, který se ve svých padesáti zamiluje do mechanické baleríny na klíček.
děj se většinou odehrává ve smyšleném městě Nevers (podobnost s názvem města, kde koncem 30. let věznili profesora [!] Waltera Benjamina, asi není náhodná) a plyne na pozadí čistky na univerzitě, studentských protestů a zásahů zelených mužíků, které poblázněný profesor není schopen vnímat. autorka pochází z Hongkongu, a v románu se tak dají hledat paralely s předáním Hongkongu Číně (tedy „Pokrokové [Vanguard] republice Ksana“).
splývání reality se sny a představami, tajemná souvislost mezi profesorem Q a jeho záhadným přítelem (nebo snad alter egem?) Owlishem, procitnutí věčně zamlklé baleríny k životu (jak v antické pověsti o Pygmalionovi), plíživá a tísnivá změna režimu, ztráta svobody a (profesorovy) paměti... hodně promyšlené, napínavé vršení jedné vrstvy na druhou. čtenáře sice můžou rozhodit dvě kapitoly ke konci psané výjimečně v du formě, ale v kontextu vlastně všechno dává smysl. tím spíš, že anglický překlad Nataschy Bruce je fakt „epesní“ (i když jasně, neumím čínsky).
děj se většinou odehrává ve smyšleném městě Nevers (podobnost s názvem města, kde koncem 30. let věznili profesora [!] Waltera Benjamina, asi není náhodná) a plyne na pozadí čistky na univerzitě, studentských protestů a zásahů zelených mužíků, které poblázněný profesor není schopen vnímat. autorka pochází z Hongkongu, a v románu se tak dají hledat paralely s předáním Hongkongu Číně (tedy „Pokrokové [Vanguard] republice Ksana“).
splývání reality se sny a představami, tajemná souvislost mezi profesorem Q a jeho záhadným přítelem (nebo snad alter egem?) Owlishem, procitnutí věčně zamlklé baleríny k životu (jak v antické pověsti o Pygmalionovi), plíživá a tísnivá změna režimu, ztráta svobody a (profesorovy) paměti... hodně promyšlené, napínavé vršení jedné vrstvy na druhou. čtenáře sice můžou rozhodit dvě kapitoly ke konci psané výjimečně v du formě, ale v kontextu vlastně všechno dává smysl. tím spíš, že anglický překlad Nataschy Bruce je fakt „epesní“ (i když jasně, neumím čínsky).
May 17, 2023
A fascinating and unique book - never read anything like it before. Surrealist to the point of occasionally being difficult to follow, but I loved the story of Owlish and Aliss
Read
September 17, 2023DNF
I hate not finishing books, but I couldn't get my teeth into anything here - it was dreamlike and swirling and interesting but I just felt so bored by it. I'm sorry.
I hate not finishing books, but I couldn't get my teeth into anything here - it was dreamlike and swirling and interesting but I just felt so bored by it. I'm sorry.
July 14, 2025
I gave it a good old college try but I just found this to be absolutely boring I had no interest in any of the characters or the story all in all I just gotta give this to star
January 14, 2023
i really did not understand this bizarre novel. i tried to connect the links between all that was happening but it lost me. tse is talented in being able to write a somewhat alternative-world/fantasy novel with underlying social commentary, but by the end, nothing tied together and i didn’t gain anything out of it. i also felt extremely uncomfortable by the plot of the book itself - i understand i was going into a novel about a middle aged man who falls in love with a doll, but i didn’t expect it to be that explicit and conjure those descriptions. the relationship was disgustingly squeamish, in a bad way. kinda reminiscent of murakami in that sense. this just wasn’t for me whatsoever. i like weird books but this was too weird and too uneasy.
thank you to NetGalley and Fitzcarraldo for providing me an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.
thank you to NetGalley and Fitzcarraldo for providing me an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.
September 14, 2022
I am afraid this book was lost on me as I don’t have the knowledge or sphere of literal and cultural understanding to appreciate the meaning behind it. At face value a man is going through a midlife crisis as his country is undergoing great change. The writing is colourful and imaginative but the gradual descent into erotic dreams and fantasy became a little wearing. The times when real life intruded - his relationship with his wife and more rational goings on at his place of work were enjoyable and meaningful but unfortunately I was unable to finish the book as it was a bit beyond me.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an ARC.
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an ARC.
March 17, 2023
phenomenal.
April 3, 2023
** This review is of the audio book I was given to review **
Omnia mutantur, nihil interit
I've been an Audible member for years, but I probably would have overlooked this audio book if the publisher and Netgalley hadn't given me the chance to listen to it and write a review about it.
Before I delve deeper into the story, first compliments to the narrator, the audio book is sublimely read by Jennifer Leong, and a joy to listen to.
The novel is the debut of Dorothy Tse Hiu-hung, a Hong Kong-based author and assistant professor of creative writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Now something about the contents of this audio book: I liked it so much that I listened to it a second time, but I fear this book is not everyone's taste.
It strongly resembles a succession of stories, ideas and thoughts, and the whole thing can come across as rather imposing and chaotic to the reader/listener, who must try to find a way out of this 'chaos'.
The setting and story line change constantly, to leave the reader/listener in utter confusion each time. It takes some getting used to at first, but once you let yourself be carried away on the waves by the beautiful narration, you find yourself in a magical dream world, where illusion, doubling, change and shape shifting are important and recurring themes.
All the stories are ingeniously strung together, with each time a metamorphosis heralding the transition to a new story. It is an ingenious fabric of stories that indirectly refer to each other and consists of frame narratives and frame narratives within frame narratives. A palace of mirrors where the world becomes fluid and nothing remains or appears to be what it is, and where two worlds change and converge....
Perhaps this particularly layered and almost hypnotic magic realist novel is a fairy tale, with references to the dreamy and labyrinthine shape shifting world from Ovid's Metamorphoses, or an omen, a harbinger of grief even, and does this 'owlish' then refer to the Umbrella Movement that the author so poignantly describes in her novel?
Immerse yourself in this bizarre, and strange world, in which the author turns everything upside down, to force you to look at it with different eyes. This will, hopefully, provide insight, as well as some wisdom along the way. So do it. Read or listen.
An enriching listening experience, where 'duality', politics, and change are magically told. 5 stars, this audio book is highly recommended. Thank you Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions. I leave this review voluntarily, and will probably buy the book too.
Omnia mutantur, nihil interit
I've been an Audible member for years, but I probably would have overlooked this audio book if the publisher and Netgalley hadn't given me the chance to listen to it and write a review about it.
Before I delve deeper into the story, first compliments to the narrator, the audio book is sublimely read by Jennifer Leong, and a joy to listen to.
The novel is the debut of Dorothy Tse Hiu-hung, a Hong Kong-based author and assistant professor of creative writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Now something about the contents of this audio book: I liked it so much that I listened to it a second time, but I fear this book is not everyone's taste.
It strongly resembles a succession of stories, ideas and thoughts, and the whole thing can come across as rather imposing and chaotic to the reader/listener, who must try to find a way out of this 'chaos'.
The setting and story line change constantly, to leave the reader/listener in utter confusion each time. It takes some getting used to at first, but once you let yourself be carried away on the waves by the beautiful narration, you find yourself in a magical dream world, where illusion, doubling, change and shape shifting are important and recurring themes.
All the stories are ingeniously strung together, with each time a metamorphosis heralding the transition to a new story. It is an ingenious fabric of stories that indirectly refer to each other and consists of frame narratives and frame narratives within frame narratives. A palace of mirrors where the world becomes fluid and nothing remains or appears to be what it is, and where two worlds change and converge....
Perhaps this particularly layered and almost hypnotic magic realist novel is a fairy tale, with references to the dreamy and labyrinthine shape shifting world from Ovid's Metamorphoses, or an omen, a harbinger of grief even, and does this 'owlish' then refer to the Umbrella Movement that the author so poignantly describes in her novel?
Immerse yourself in this bizarre, and strange world, in which the author turns everything upside down, to force you to look at it with different eyes. This will, hopefully, provide insight, as well as some wisdom along the way. So do it. Read or listen.
An enriching listening experience, where 'duality', politics, and change are magically told. 5 stars, this audio book is highly recommended. Thank you Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions. I leave this review voluntarily, and will probably buy the book too.
August 5, 2024
This book shifts through dreamscapes and escapes, often without notice of the reader and indeed the characters. Professor Q seeks to escape the monotony of his life, not getting his most deserved promotion and his marriage. He escapes through a life-size ballerina doll named Alissa.
The initial infatuation between Professor Q and his dolls feels almost predatory and created a very intentional uncomfortable reading experience. As Alissa comes to life and gains her own mind and thoughts, it shows the process of her ‘awakening’ to reality. Professor Q neglects reality, missing key details of his students going missing, his peers overtaking him and the state of the fictional Nevers around him.
Through an Kafkaesque point of view of the world, Owlish details the riots and protests of Nevers, an allegorical Hong Kong - showing the importance to stay ‘awake’ and be in tune with what matters most in the world: your freedom and individuality.
The initial infatuation between Professor Q and his dolls feels almost predatory and created a very intentional uncomfortable reading experience. As Alissa comes to life and gains her own mind and thoughts, it shows the process of her ‘awakening’ to reality. Professor Q neglects reality, missing key details of his students going missing, his peers overtaking him and the state of the fictional Nevers around him.
Through an Kafkaesque point of view of the world, Owlish details the riots and protests of Nevers, an allegorical Hong Kong - showing the importance to stay ‘awake’ and be in tune with what matters most in the world: your freedom and individuality.
March 31, 2023
3.5 stars
In an alternate Hong Kong, Professor Q has a dull marriage and mediocre career at a university. While sinister forces are taking over the city and his classes are left empty from student protests, he embarks on an all encompassing love affair with a life-sized ballerina doll, Aliss, who has come to life.
Owlish is an intriguing and somewhat ethereal commentary on the takeover of Hong Kong. It’s a really well written book, and at times very weird. However, I think a lot of the symbolism went over my head and I felt a bit lost at times, especially towards the end. I listened to the audiobook which was well narrated, but I don’t think the book works well as an audiobook - at least for me. It’s definitely a book I would like to revisit again one day in physical form so I can linger over some of the passages a bit longer and appreciate it more.
In an alternate Hong Kong, Professor Q has a dull marriage and mediocre career at a university. While sinister forces are taking over the city and his classes are left empty from student protests, he embarks on an all encompassing love affair with a life-sized ballerina doll, Aliss, who has come to life.
Owlish is an intriguing and somewhat ethereal commentary on the takeover of Hong Kong. It’s a really well written book, and at times very weird. However, I think a lot of the symbolism went over my head and I felt a bit lost at times, especially towards the end. I listened to the audiobook which was well narrated, but I don’t think the book works well as an audiobook - at least for me. It’s definitely a book I would like to revisit again one day in physical form so I can linger over some of the passages a bit longer and appreciate it more.
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