Female dog decoction

Author: Liu Suola
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Features: A fantastic and stunning book! A tale of family, separation, war, and the legends of generations, paired with seemingly chaotic illustrations, making the entire story brimming with eerie and sensual colors! Immerse yourself in an exhilarating reading experience in the age of visuals. This is a remarkable book, and it is Liu Suola's best novel to date. The novel can be read as the legend of an outsider tribe on a remote island 4,000 years in the future, or as a story about women. The entire novel is filled with romance between men and women. Men carry the path, women convey emotions, and the is always emotions being destroyed by the path. Thus, the big story is vaguely written and often "fragmented" or "scattered"; the small stories are intricately detailed, often branching out with flowers blooming on the branches. Men serve as the skeleton and background, while women provide the flesh and soul. The greatest enjoyment of reading this novel lies in its form and language. First, regarding the structure, it builds a grand framework, blending myth, history, and romantic legends into one; it draws from various forms such as notes, traditional operas, poetry, folk songs, newspaper collages, and film scripts, with each part echoing and corresponding to the others. The styles are rich and varied, yet the rhythm is (calm and unhurried), well-arranged, and free of redundancy or boredom. In terms of narrative language, Liu Suola takes bold experiments, with the language style evolving step by step as the story progresses. Initially, it speaks of the past, with a mix of classical and vernacular Chinese, concise and elegant, using numerous parallel short sentences, reminiscent of the clarity of Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) and Soushenji (Record of the Spirits). Then, as it shifts to the present, it gradually transforms into modern vernacular Chinese, long and detailed, capturing the leisurely and worldly tone of Chinese novels from the Ming and Qing dynasties to the modern era. The inserted folk songs, parodic poems, and lighthearted verses are crafted according to the characters' identities, eras, and genres, combining solemnity and wit, vivid and inscrutable, filled with subtlety and cleverness without a trace. It leaves you marveling: This person is truly a born novelist!