告别的年代

by 黎紫書

《告别的年代》是黎紫书的首部长篇小说。小说的主人公“你”是一个少年，住在一家叫“五月花”的老旧的小楼上，在母亲因病去世后，循着母亲的遗言，到图书馆沉寂的角落，翻出一本“大书”——《告别的年代》，试图在书中找出自己那一直缺位的父亲，就像童年时，在“五月花”的角落里，找出母亲藏匿的玩具。在“你”读的《告别的年代》里，主人公是一个叫“杜丽安”的女人，她是那些街头流动的小摊主的女儿，由于巧合的机缘，嫁给了比自己年长二十多岁的黑社会小头目钢波做妾，跟他的女儿刘莲一个屋檐下过生活。“你”渐渐读完《告别的年代》，杜丽安的故事渐渐明朗，而你黯淡的身世也渐渐浮出水面……

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Asia, Asian Literature, Historical, Literature, Literary Fiction

365 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2010

Reviews

[Aaron Mcilhenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nobody contains more multitudes than our girl Du Li An

[Krys · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such a strange one. The book starts off on page 513 with a character whose lover is caught up in the May 13, 1969 race riots, but instead of focusing on the inciting historical event, it quickly veers off course and enters a slipstream of marginalised history where the fates of ordinary, seemingly inconsequential lives have been irrevocably altered by what has come to pass—even if these characters had not been directly affected by the riots. The question haunting the book, or at least the Du Li An portion, is: would life have been different if the riots had not happened?

It's a question worth working through, but the problem I had with the book is that I simply did not care about the metafictional elements at all. There's a lot of fragmentation here: two sets of twins who grew up with different childhoods; the possibly splintered identity of Du Li An as a writer and a character in the book, chalked up to multiple personality disorder; and parallel subplots involving an identical hotel/brothel and an unnamed critic. But these elements are far less compelling than the straightforward narration of Du Li An's story and the multitudes she wields as a character.

More importantly, a lot of the reviews I've read point towards the book's narrative fragmentation as a way of echoing the fragmented nature of real-life history. But I find this so lazy and unimaginative on the part of the reviewer, but also the book. The overall impression I was left with is that the book is guilty of further marginalising invisible history not only by refusing to address the subject head-on, but also by burying it through unnecessary obfuscation and formal puzzles.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

mixed feelings overall -- the metafictional aspects felt more and more like a gimmick the longer the novel went on

[EditorDevil · Rating 3 out of 5]

這部長篇小說成書已有十年，今天才讀到。敍事手法別出心裁，由「你」去敍述女主角杜麗安的故事，然後真正的作者用第三人角度敍述「你」在小說的故事，然後再有一個第四人和作者的故事。作為讀者的我們，就看着這三層故事進進出出。看似無相關的三層故事，三層的敍事者，卻又緊密交纏，就像俄羅斯娃娃，一層套一層，當中還夾雜疑幻疑真的情節，但只是順着一條脈絡，就可看到故事的發展。

全書看畢，像做了一場很長的春秋大夢，細節忘了五分，但情節還是記得的。故事其實有點老套，勝在手法獨特。

[Galina Tucker]

No idea how to rate this one. I wouldn't really have said I liked it at any point while reading it, but I also definitely wanted to finish it? It was confusing and hard to follow in a lot of ways but it also felt like that was kind of the point?

[YZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

The answers to the hide-and-seek are on (English edition) pages 812, 831-832, and 882. Bonus: page 531.

[Mirjana (Mirjana_bere) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ⭐️

The age of goodbyes pisateljice Li Zi Shu (v prevodu YZ Chin) se začne na strani 513, ki simbolizira 5. mesec in njegov 13. dan - to je bil 13. maj 1969, ko so rasni spopadi v Maleziji, ki so terjali stotine mrtvih, za vedno zaznamovali življenje manjšin v Maleziji, katerih največji skupini so še danes Kitajci in Indijci. Roman ni zgodba o zgodovinskih dogodkih, ampak o njihovih posledicah, predvsem na življenje malezijskih Kitajk.

Glavna oseba je Du Li An, katere ljubimec je izginil po rasnih spopadih, ona pa se potem počuti primorana poročiti z vplivnim kitajskim gangsterjem. Du Li An se v letih zakona počasi prelevi iz skromnega dekleta v uspešno poslovno žensko, a mladostne ljubezni ne pozabi.

Že ta zgodba bi lahko samostojno nosila roman, a pisateljica ji je dodala dve paralelni. V eni ima(š) glavno vlogo "ti", ki bere(š) knjigo The age of goodbyes, v drugi pa Četrta Oseba, neznani kritik pisateljice Du Li An, ki je pisala pod psevdonimom Shaozi - eno od njenih del je - seveda - The age of goodbyes.

Paralele med temi tremi pripovedni niso najbolj jasne, nastopajo osebe z enakimi imeni in nekateri dogodki so si podobni - lahko se tolmačijo kot zgodbe različnih generacij ali kako imajo majhne odločitve lahko velike posledice.

Toplo priporočam, še sploh če radi berete eksperimentalno literaturo.

[Natasha Meechan · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was so so weird but very good

[Gina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't really know why it took me a full year to finish this book. It's not particularly dense or especially convoluted, though I did have a bit of trouble keeping track of the three layers of narrative at the beginning. The sense of place also takes a while to settle in - it's not until the word kopitiam came up that I realized it was set in Malaysia (as always I had emptied my mind of all context for why this was on my to read list by the time I took out the ebook from the library and didn't both reading the publisher copy). I also don't know much about the initial event, the May 13, 1969 race riots, and the narrative skirts around major historical moments, instead sticking close to the characters' every day lives. Having now finished, I'm not sure I really get it, but there's something soothing yet unsettling about the rhythm of the prose and the drift between the "you" reading The Age of Goodbyes and the story of Du An Li as she navigates running a restaurant and dealing with her shitty ex-gangster husband Steely Bo. The abrasiveness of the Fourth Person's critique of Shaozi's authorship is a tinge of comic relief.

Summary for my own memory: We start with "you" taking out The Age of Goodbyes from the library and getting immersed in the second layer of the story. In 1969, Du An Li leaves her home and first love Yip Lin Sang to marry the triad member Steely Bo. The former man is arrested in a hunt for socialists while the latter provides a measure of protection. As time goes on, Steely Bo, who already has a family in a fishing village, falls from his semi-feared, if not respected, position in the triad as Du An Li comes into her own. She has an affair with Yip Lin Sang's twin Yip Mong Sang at the same time Steely Bo's daughter, the demure Lau Lin, dates him. Meanwhile, "your" trickster mother dies and you navigate life in the aging Mayflower boarding hotel. You fall in love with new resident Mana (implied to be a sex worker like many of the other residents and your mother). Mana never talks, only visiting your room in the middle of the night, but you intuit meaning in all her gestures. She leaves mysteriously and in the end you're left with the Mayflower's owner Uncle Sai. Yip Mong Sang is a playboy, and he leaves Lau Lin before she realizes that she's pregnant. She gives birth to twin boys, giving one to Du An Li to raise as her own. Du An Li finds out that Steely Bo had yet another family, and banishes him, decrepit and sad, to her old home. In a short wrap up, Lau Lin dies and you return the book to the library. Interspersed with all this is a review of the Fourth Person's obsessive writings on the also mysterious Shaozi, who is rumored to be named Du An Li but only loosely fits the outlines of the Du An Li of the inner Age of Goodbyes. At the end, another writer of an English work titled The Bygone Era of Goodbyes is introduced.

The meta narratives don't quite fit together even at the end, so the reader is always searching for the thread between the layers. What really ties them together is an air of frustrated longing, one that can't fully be expelled by resignation to the way things are. Of course, "what things are" is never really solid even within one narrative.

[eel · Rating 4 out of 5]

not fully decided on rating, but definitely at least a 3.5 trending towards a 4 star read.

The Age of Goodbyes is an underrated and carefully written novel by Li Zi Chu, translated by YZ Chin (published by Feminist Press) primarily exploring the lives of Malaysian Chinese women in a small urban area in Malaysia. although the experimental narrative structure of TAoG takes some getting used to, Li Zi Chu is a talented writer of prose and imo even attempting a novel with the kind of metafiction structure that TAoG employs is an impressive feat of writing. the prose in the novel was very beautiful and poignant, with many nuances between characters feeling delicately constructed and the climaxes of these relationships feeling impactful and believable.

[Suzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing metafiction with lots of layers that all feed into each other, to form a complex web of parallel and interconnected narratives. I think I am missing some needed context to catch all the Malaysian history referenced in the blurbs (I'm unclear when "silenced memories of racial violence, social injustice, and civil rights repressions" were really covered?) but it was a pretty solid book about class and status, aging and death, and what it means to be a person and look back at your life.

There was a weird amount of commentary about sex workers and trans women that rubbed me the wrong way.

gifted copy from feminist press

[Callahan McIlnay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book in a library and was intrigued by the uniqueness of it. The start of the book talked about finding it in a library and the fact that it started on page 513. I didn’t Iike the sections talking about reading the book. I just wanted to get lost in Du Li An’s story who was married to the gangster. I didn’t completely understand the sections about the author either. There were too many story lines and they all felt underdeveloped. I sped read this book.

[marcie wu · Rating 5 out of 5]

风雨书店淘来的。第一次读马华文学，也没有去过南洋，但在里面找到了许多旧香港的影子和粤语白话，似是听得雨打芭蕉的声音了。很多人不喜欢书有前言后记，我倒没什么特别的感觉，但读这本的时候亏得有黄锦树的序和董启章的后记才更看得明白些，《告别的年代》是书中之书，杜丽安、你、韶子和第四人分别在三层叙事空间内，互相指涉牵绊，互相捆绑，是彼此的镣铐，文字像水月镜花似的梦中呓语，只能摸清一个大概。在后记里，边缘文学、经验匮乏和文学终结的大三角最给我启发，尤其是：经验匮乏者以无穷尽的垃圾堆填来扩大意义的黑洞，���妙地把匮乏变成自己的资本，从而对经验的权威定义做出嘲讽。谢谢，真的有鼓励到我。

[Catherine Ho · Rating 5 out of 5]

More people should read this book it is exceptionally emotionally resonant. I read it a couple years ago and there are many scenes and passages that I still think about because they’re so beautiful and moving

[Lanie Tankard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's my review from The Woven Tale Press:

https://www.thewoventalepress.net/202...

[Luola Chen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good but confusing plot. Also, I wasn’t satisfied by the ending I feel like things were left unsettled

[Jonathan yates · Rating 5 out of 5]

This deserves a little bit more attention in my opinion, very interesting story within story writing about a corner of the world that is far far away

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

Read my full review here.

[Kho Liang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sophisticated read...