BRAISED PORK

In searching for answers to her husband’s untimely death, a young widow in Beijing finds room to explore her own existential angst.

Jia Jia is packing for an out-of-town holiday when she finds her husband, Cheng Hang, drowned in the bathtub of their Beijing apartment. It speaks to the quality of their marriage that she immediately feels resentment and disgust bubble up to the surface. “He had never loved her, no, she knew that much. She was not a fool. But they had promised each other a lifelong partnership, held together if not by love, then by their declared intention to have a family. And so as long as he had assured her that he intended to remain married to her, everything else had been forgivable.” In the disorienting weeks after her husband’s death, Jia Jia is liberated from societal expectations and the crushing isolation of their loveless marriage. She is free to pursue her art and even strikes up a friendship with Leo, a handsome bartender her own age. But an arresting sketch of a “fish-man” that Cheng Hang leaves behind on a pile of towels in the bathroom where he died makes Jia Jia restless. Why did her husband draw this strange creature with the head of a man and the body of a fish? Why does it draw Jia Jia in? Remembering that her husband told her he'd dreamed about this fish-man while he was on a spiritual trip to Tibet about a month earlier, Jia Jia decides to travel there for answers. Yu’s original debut spins an increasingly surreal tale which brilliantly mirrors Jia Jia’s own discombobulation. The fish-man plotline might not fully submerge the reader in the narrative, but the lush atmosphere and fast-paced story make up for it. Also, Jia Jia’s vulnerability makes her easy to root for as she begins to find her footing in the world.

Proof positive that rebirths are entirely possible—even in one lifetime.