Of course, this is a gay novel, but I don't want you or the people around you to view it purely in the light of a gay novel, because what it tells about is, first of all, human nature.
The novel is set in Beijing, with the gay male protagonist Lin Yu and his divorced wife Yingzi as clues. The background is gloomy and helpless - just like our real life, full of difficulties in survival, struggles at the bottom, desires, temptations and loss in the bustling city. As the title of the novel indicates, between the dilemma of love and desire, should we protect the mutual affection, or should we listen to the call of the heart? Should we abide by the bottom line of morality, or should we listen to the temptation of desire and do whatever it takes? Loyalty and betrayal, true love and dissoluteness, magnanimity and hypocrisy, humility and self-esteem, cowardice and pride - all of these are intertwined. How many sides should a person have?
Please allow me to proudly say that there are definitely too many things to criticize in this novel, but it is still a very good gay novel. It restores a real gay group and restores them from being distorted and demonized to people composed of blood, flesh and soul. In fact, apart from liking the same sex, what is the difference between them and the so-called normal people? At the same time, for the first time, the novel turns its attention to the wives of gays who are hidden behind the gay community, who are equally large and suffer more internally. If homosexuality is an original sin, why should they have to bear the most bitter fruit silently?