Library

The 28 works included in this book represent the author's writing achievements in recent years. Compared with his earlier works, these works are more mature, broad and have a sense of life, describing all aspects and disturbances of life. Cao Kou divided these 28 works into three parts: the first part contains 9 articles about intimate relationships, including "Wife", "Husband", "Mother and Daughter", etc. The 9 articles in the second part, including "The Biography of Zhang Degui", "In Hangzhou", "I'm So Sad", etc., Are observations of the world and others; the 10 articles in the third part, including "Happy Childhood", "We Discovered Oil", etc., Are mostly based on childhood and imagination.

"It Will Make You Comfortable When You Lie Down" contains twenty-one short stories by Cao Kou, some of which were published on literary BBS when the Internet was just popular. These works, crafted with pure literary enthusiasm and a rigorous craftsman's attitude, are mature as soon as they are produced, calm and majestic, and unique in style. Compared with later works, they are "more Cao Kou".

A collection of novels set in a small riverside town in the Yangtze River Delta. Duck Town is the name of this mist-shrouded town. It consists of a group of short stories about schoolmates in childhood, young women who left their hometown to work hard, middle-aged people who are obsessed with fishing, and migrant workers who travel between towns and cities. It tells about the inexplicable embarrassment encountered by a prodigal son who returns home, his relatives and friends who rely on each other but dislike each other, and his melancholy reflections on daily life. Regarding this book, Cao Kou called it "the product of the so-called 'village' life in the past two years" and intended to "write as a farmer sitting in the village, with the main purpose of writing about current township life."

"Night in Duck Town: A Collection of Stories by Wang Kui and Zhang Liang" contains 16 short stories with "Wang Kui" and "Zhang Liang" as the protagonists. The events took place in Baguazhou Town, the hometown of the author Cao Kou, and in urban Nanjing, from the 1990s to about 2000. This collection of novels is rich in content. It is not only a vivid record of a region and an era, but also a valuable literary work. In the novel collection, Wang Kui, Zhang Liang, Li Qian and others are all ordinary young people in small towns. While being squeezed by life, they strive to live freely. Their life situations are written in a simple and meaningful way, which makes people feel a little nostalgic. From this work, we can truly feel the confusion, pursuit, nostalgia and other mental states of young people in an era of rapid development, amidst the vague changes in which villages and towns continue to become part of the city.

"In the County Town/Buhuhu Novella" written by Cao Kou contains three novellas by Cao Kou, totaling 80,000 words. In "Mother", "I" wrote that the mother of my girlfriend who had been separated for more than ten years suddenly called me and wanted to come to my house to see me. Therefore, the whole family was waiting with a complicated mood for the arrival of this "former mother-in-law" until the truth came out after she arrived. "In the County" writes about Wang Kui and Gao Min going to the county to visit their friends Zhang Liang and Li Qian. Wang Kui and Gao Min are a pair of lovers, as are Zhang Liang and Li Qian. The difference is that Wang Kui and Gao Min are in an ordinary love relationship, while Zhang Liang and Li Qian are in a relationship between a married man and a "mistress." The same thing is that they all face a dilemma in life: Wang Kui and Gao Min's relationship is in a cold war, while Zhang Liang and Li Qian's relationship is in a situation of embarrassment from all sides. There is a mystery behind the meeting of the four people. On the one hand, Wang Kui and Gao Min want to repair their relationship that is on the verge of rupture. On the other hand, Zhang Liang and Li Qian want to escape heavy surveillance and continue their underground "love." However, during a group trip of four people, Zhang Liang showed an unexpected sadness when he learned that his wife was finally going to divorce him during the banquet.