“I am a sullen pebble Detachedly rolling through life Suddenly resting from an afternoon flight”
In an autumn afternoon, when the sunset light casts shadows over the white uniform sleeves, I help myself with a work of Nguyễn Nhật Ánh, as his stories can mysteriously draw me in: a small quaver of early life, a bit of purity and innocence tinged with gloom. With such naturality, the author leads me into a blossoming love story of young adults: “The Little Sisters”
Since childhood, we have been obsessed with fantasy worlds and all kinds of comics imaginable. Yet strangely enough, when grown up, I immerse myself with books filled with sympathy. It seems that since I am at that age that I find myself in Khoa…
Khoa, a shy boy who came to Đà Nẵng to study alone, carries within him a longing for home and his friends. Perhaps that yearning compelled him to walk around the uproarious streets of the city with just a bag only to stop at Nguyễn Du street where he hears the melodic piano along with a beautiful shadow on the window, of whom he calls “Stéphanette” (His self-proclaimed heroine for his poems). Ever Since then, Khoa started writing poems, letting his imagination run wild about her; yet in the end, Khoa can not be with her and the shepherd remains alone.
Throughout the story, we can occasionally find verses from Xuân Diệu and Nguyễn Bính, which exudes delicacy as well as the despondency of crushes, which the author used masterfully to express the main character. Not only that, the poems Khoa wrote himself to confess his feelings to “Stéphanette” were no less deep and moving. Such a shame it is, that those works of his, filled with blooming love, never reached the right hands but got scattered. “The leaves fall Does autumn fade too? Nay, there is love Still deep in the barks!”
To me, “The Little Sisters” is sad but at the same time a book well worth reading as it lingers on like bitter coffee droplets on the filter. Yes, it is bleak, which feels light yet deep, clear yet lingering. Perhaps those which are most attached to the dreamy age have struck a chord within me since the first page only to crystallize into the shadow of a country boy desiring love, desiring a person to stay beside. To this day I still remember Nguyễn Du street, where a boy quietly walks the secluded streets:
“Such is the length of the streets, that I often feel alone Such is my joy when she came, and my grief when she left.”
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