01
"Cat's Table"
Author: [Canada] Michael Ondaje
In this book, Ondaje tells us about an 11-year-old child's more than 20 days on the boat, telling the story of a minor who is so close to the adult world, witnessing all kinds of changes and encountering various characters. The angle of the narration is quite unique, and the method of narration is also very fragmented. It's a real look back, a look back at growth. On the ship, the protagonist becomes a companion with two other children, Cassius and Lamartine, becoming a group of uninhibited, trouble-loving, and peeping squads.
An eleven-year-old boy crossed the ocean on a steamship, and the story that happened on the boat was like a rite of passage, pushing him to grow up with his hands. The whole event is recalled in an autobiographical way, carrying absurd and bizarre stories on a rocking steamship. A deaf woman, a prisoner, a circus, a thief baron, and before they know it, the boy and two friends are all drawn into these stories. Lamartine's dunhounds and Cassius's cynicism seem to be two of Michael's inner personalities. Because of this, Michael, like Lamartine, wants to protect his cousin and does various teenage pranks with Cassius.
They listen to stories about adults at cat tables, or about literature, or about music, or about adults with two kidneys, but these adults seem to be socially isolated people who come to the most unpopular cat table to spend time with children. And they seem to have grown up in these stories and adults in an instant during these twenty-one days of ferrying. After having someone who wants to protect, they know that the object of their protection does not need their own protection, and they are tricked into doing petty theft or even falling into a confused relationship, and everything seems to be happening like a hurricane at sea.
Even years later, looking back, the ship's friends drifted apart. Everything is like a ferry, the people who meet on the boat go their separate ways after coming ashore, but everything that happens is burned. Michael came ashore and hugged his mother tightly, trying to regain his innocence, but it seemed that the innocence of the past remained in the ship and never landed again; Cassius finally learned something from listening to those artistic stories and became an unruly artist. My cousin continued to study and then married normally. In this way, after each thing, it seems that each develops according to the trajectory of life.
Those who disappear, those who die, are like the ship that no longer goes up, left in memory to influence people. The cat's table, sitting with insignificant people, listening to absurd stories or deep artistic knowledge, eventually leaves the table, under the influence of each other, tries to be each other and eventually becomes self.
02
"Strangers Back to Home"
Author: [English] Mohin Hamid
The people in "Nostalgia" are far away from their hometowns because of the war, and "Strangers Returning to Their Hometowns" is also about foreigners who have traveled far away, but the protagonist eventually returns to his hometown because of the war.
The whole book begins with a full-spirited student with a golden dream rooted in the United States, and when the future is bright and the love begins, it ends in a sudden disaster.
As a foreigner who has lived in the United States, he observes that after 9/11, people lived in an extremely simplified world: "We fight them." "It seems that everything should be cut in half and clearly divided, either a friend or an enemy, and the tolerance and pluralism of the United States are gradually disintegrating, no longer opening its arms to accept possibilities, give opportunities, and nurture dreams." "Strangers Back to Home" writes about the end of this dream that doesn't just happen in the United States.
The delicate and sensitive political situation has strained relations between his hometown and the United States, and Erica and he have been far and near. This made Chang Gez feel the various barriers in the United States as a foreigner.
He wasn't sure if he belonged to New York or Lahore, or to both cities, or neither. He began to re-examine the American life he had once longed for, with a decent career, a decent income, a busy city, exciting challenges, endless desires... After much hesitation, he chose to return to his hometown of Lahore, where he became completely different from before, and what he had given up was both so important and insignificant.
Years later, at a teahouse in his hometown of Lahore, Changaiz told a mysterious stranger about it all. And their fates are unconsciously intertwined.
The novel opens and ends in the endless gushing of Changgaiz and the silent gaze of a mysterious American, shattering the huge illusion of the "American Dream", sharply piercing the anxiety and uneasiness of today, suggesting the communication and collision of the two cultures, or the entanglement of two choices of one person, or the dialogue of the self, and the blank space of the finale is a question for everyone.
03
The Weight of the Piano
Author: [U.S.] Chrissy Kander
1960s. The Soviet girl Katya got a beautiful piano. This piano brings her the gentleness of a sunny drizzle and a hard life. Marriage and society forced her to leave her homeland forever, the ambitious young performer became a small American immigrant, and the most heart-wrenching thing was that the piano was separated from her in turmoil.
In 2012. Clara, a young woman in a small American town, does not know how to play an instrument, but she owns a piano, which is the only relic left after the unexpected death of her parents. Clara is lonely and strong, but the old piano is like a heavy and untouchable burden, which overwhelms her. Until one day, a photographer appeared and accidentally revealed the secrets of the Clara family behind the old piano.
Objects can see a person's life. A piano was once a hope for one person to fight against the cruel world, and it was also a sustenance for another person to escape from a lonely life. The piano witnesses the journey of life, and the life of the piano is a long song of the end of the world and destiny.
A piano, carrying the first half of the lives of two women, has intersected because of a person and a piano. Katya in the '60s wouldn't have imagined that her beloved piano would be a relic left by Clara's parents in 2012, and Grisha wouldn't have imagined seeing her mother's piano again. Everyone's love for the piano is different: music and piano are the light of Katya's life, Clara's warm memories of her parents, and Grisha's love for her mother. In the end, Clara pushes the violin down Death Valley, returning to Katya, who loves it deeply, and allowing her and Grisha to learn to let go. The two parallel lines gradually intertwined and soon separated, and Clara finally found her emotions.