Her life was a love letter to the world, written with almost unbearable clarity.
When she was four, her mother disappeared down a rainy alley with a suitcase in hand. From that moment on, “goodbye” became the only language she knew for love. She possessed senses unlike anyone else’s: she could hear colors and see smells, and amid the thunder of war, she could follow the path of dust dancing in the morning light. This gift led her to write that “life is a gorgeous robe,” but it also let her see early on that beneath the robe, everyone had their hidden lice.
In novelistic prose, this book revisits the defining landmarks on her inner map: the survival skills of keeping a cool eye, forged amid the flames of war in Hong Kong; the all-consuming romance that brought her “down into the dust” but never blossomed; and, in her later years, the silent battle she waged in seclusion, using absolute order to hold back the wilderness within.
What we seek to contemplate is not a legendary tale, but how an extraordinarily sensitive soul wielded words as a weapon to contend with, reconcile with, and ultimately find herself in a harsh world. It is an epic of self-discovery.
