"If I were her, I would not have been myself"
The semester has not ended. There are still a month and ten days left--and that actually ought to be something to be glad of. Nevertheless, after spending a whole week getting chased by deadlines, it is simply impossible to avoid being enticed by all kinds of leisurely doings. And so I went home this weekend, and stayed up till 4am for two consecutive days reading the set of Qin Wenjun's books I ordered a week ago.
The story I like best so far is 一个女孩的心灵史 ("The Mental History of a Girl"). It is about the life of a girl from the viewpoint of her mother, from the time she was born till the day she finished primary school at the age of 12. To the LMM fans, this book may be viewed as a modernized version of Anne of Ingleside in Chinese, but it touches me much more deeply than AoI (which I also like) due to the familiarity. As I have long known from personal experience, the world of children is not the ideal and pure paradise as some adults seem to think. It contains many of the shadowy corners we see in adult life, some of which may appear quite shocking to some adults--yet there are plenty of beautiful parts, too, as long as the parents know how to cultivate them. I envy the girl for her parents: her understanding mother who never teaches her daughter anything but good and is fair when judging everybody including the bullies and the unreasonably strict teachers, and her wise father with his idealism and passion for truth, and just the right amount of sense mixed in. Even though many of the parents I know in real life are good, including my own, hardly any are that good. Not even Anne and Gilbert. Most parents want to teach their children to be good, but faced with all these outside influences and complications of real life, it isn't that easy at all. Indeed, though the ending of the book was not particularly bad, it was a bit saddening. The dear girl left the primary school alone, just like how she first entered it. She had got some friends, but no true bosom friends--she once had one, but they had grown a little apart.
I think that the story is based more or less on the author's own experiences, and that is partly why it feels so real. Actually, as the authur has said, every child is an irreplaceable miracle, and the growth of any child, given a skilled writer, can become a touching story.
I find some of Qin's works slightly too "children-oriented" (it would be a bit too much to say "childish"). A 22-year-old may have the heart of a 12-year-old deep inside, but the sense of humor will be quite different, no matter what. I also feel somewhat disappointed that she, too, has the tendency to inflict the angelically good ones with such dreadful diseases as leukemia. I had been sad to see this in LMA/LMM/LMM fanfic authors, but they were all foreigners and I thought this was only a cultural conflict--and this disillusionment is quite unsettling. Yet, none of these can prevent her from becoming one of my favorite authors.
The story I like best so far is 一个女孩的心灵史 ("The Mental History of a Girl"). It is about the life of a girl from the viewpoint of her mother, from the time she was born till the day she finished primary school at the age of 12. To the LMM fans, this book may be viewed as a modernized version of Anne of Ingleside in Chinese, but it touches me much more deeply than AoI (which I also like) due to the familiarity. As I have long known from personal experience, the world of children is not the ideal and pure paradise as some adults seem to think. It contains many of the shadowy corners we see in adult life, some of which may appear quite shocking to some adults--yet there are plenty of beautiful parts, too, as long as the parents know how to cultivate them. I envy the girl for her parents: her understanding mother who never teaches her daughter anything but good and is fair when judging everybody including the bullies and the unreasonably strict teachers, and her wise father with his idealism and passion for truth, and just the right amount of sense mixed in. Even though many of the parents I know in real life are good, including my own, hardly any are that good. Not even Anne and Gilbert. Most parents want to teach their children to be good, but faced with all these outside influences and complications of real life, it isn't that easy at all. Indeed, though the ending of the book was not particularly bad, it was a bit saddening. The dear girl left the primary school alone, just like how she first entered it. She had got some friends, but no true bosom friends--she once had one, but they had grown a little apart.
I think that the story is based more or less on the author's own experiences, and that is partly why it feels so real. Actually, as the authur has said, every child is an irreplaceable miracle, and the growth of any child, given a skilled writer, can become a touching story.
I find some of Qin's works slightly too "children-oriented" (it would be a bit too much to say "childish"). A 22-year-old may have the heart of a 12-year-old deep inside, but the sense of humor will be quite different, no matter what. I also feel somewhat disappointed that she, too, has the tendency to inflict the angelically good ones with such dreadful diseases as leukemia. I had been sad to see this in LMA/LMM/LMM fanfic authors, but they were all foreigners and I thought this was only a cultural conflict--and this disillusionment is quite unsettling. Yet, none of these can prevent her from becoming one of my favorite authors.