Novels about war have too many ways to write, and there is too much content to write. Focusing on those who have walked through and in war can show the most real and complex parts of human nature.
Zhang Ling's novel "Lao Yan" is a novel about war, and this war is the war against Japan that we are most familiar with. But in the whole novel, there is no detailed description of war, but here we can still feel the cruelty of war, the destruction of human nature by war, but also see the beautiful emotions that cannot crush the life force and cannot be destroyed. Hope is always there, it's just a little distorted.
"Lao Yan", the title of the book comes from the "Le fu poetry collection", refers to the two migratory birds of Berau and swallows, which were separated after a brief reunion, and now we often use the word "Lao Yan flying apart". The protagonists in Zhang Ling's novel are such a kind of story about life and death, about time, and even about the "various flights" of the region.
In the later stages of the War of Resistance Against Japan, some Americans came to China to help China train more qualified and war-conscious soldiers; and in the same way, foreign missionaries have also been active in China, Chinese, Chinese soldiers, American instructors, American missionaries, just like this in a very remote place, what kind of story will happen to them? A woman connected this memory.
It has been 70 years since the end of the war, and this is the setting time of Zhang Ling's storyline. Everything is settled, everything will not change again, and this is the time to make up your mind. Three men, once agreed, come to the place where they once met, where their dreams began, to meet again after death. And through the mouth of these "dead" to narrate, comprehensive and concrete, there is also mutual confirmation between each other, and this narrative method also allows the author to jump out of the matter, easier to grasp the overall situation, easier to establish the whole story, resonate with readers.
Pastor Billy, a foreign witness to the war, was the first of the three people in the story to leave, of course, his life was fixed in the era when the war ended, and all his memories remained at that time, and the stories after him waited for others to fill in. But the people he cares about, his thoughts are always there. Otherwise, how could his soul have waited for 70 years in this part of China.
Liu Zhaohu, one of China's most native warriors, his life is the most turbulent, and he is also a true experiencer of China's suffering. The brutality of Japanese devils, the sacrifice of relatives, the humiliation of fiancée, and the multitude of people who join the army are the most complex embodiments of human nature, and he is also the character who needs to be established in the novel.
And the only woman in the story, that is, Liu Zhaohu's fiancée Ah Yan, she is the real victim. She has three names among three men, and she has three very different experiences, but she has only one, and she only has one life, but she has shown different resilience at different stages, and her story is the saddest one.
What kind of experience did Ian Ferguson, the American soldier, the longest-lived, the last person to arrive in the three-person commitment, have in this relationship? He was an alienated bystander, but also a factual involvement in the story.
The novel "Lao Yan" is very simple, but the connotation expressed by the author must not be simple, there are too many aspects of human nature here, which are worth our deep thinking and excavation. #Zhang Ling angeline##Novel ##全民荐书人 #