The red button on a snowy night is the keyhole of memory.
When seven-year-old Fang Jin glimpsed the dark red button on her father's coat in the attic, she had not yet realized that it would become a psychological totem throughout her life - the cold glass, the dull sound of the argument, and the blood stains on the window from the melted snow formed her first perception of "home".
This suspenseful novel uses psychological diagnosis and treatment as a prism to reflect the fate of three generations entangled in secret trauma. When Fang Jin returned to Merlot Petersburg as an adult as a psychiatrist, the truth buried in the snow began to emerge in the form of buttons, medical records, and old photos. The author uses a scalpel-like precision to cut open the suture between memory and reality: the patient's murmurs in the clinic overlap with the echoes of the childhood attic, the ink on the diagnosis and treatment records is smeared with blood on a snowy night, and the red button that has never been found becomes the last key to unlock the family secret.
In a deep narrative, suspense is not only the hook of the plot, but also the labyrinth of human nature. When Fang Jin discovers that her diagnosis and treatment plan is replicating her mother's tragedy, readers will be forced to face a cruel proposition: Are we healing trauma, or are we becoming a container for trauma?
The exhibition features the "button archives" that appear repeatedly in the novel - button specimens of different materials, each one corresponding to a repressed memory fragment. When you gaze at these silent metals and threads, you may hear the snow outside the window falling from the pages of the book.
Purpose: The conflict between science and ethics