Guo Songfen's short stories are masterful psychological portraits that
play with the echoes of history and the nature of identity. One of the
few modernists to truly capture the fallout from such events as the
February 28th Incident and the White Terror, Guo Songfen illuminates the
quiet core of his characters through a spare and immediate style that is
at once a symptom and an allegory of the trauma in which they live.
In "Running Mother," a man is torn between his fear of abandonment and
his guilt over leaving his family, and therefore his symbolic home,
behind. "Moon Seal" follows a woman caught between traditional and
modern worlds. In "Wailing Moon," a wife learns a shocking secret after
her husband's death, realizing he was never the man she thought him to
be. Set in the United States and Taiwan, "Snow Blind" is a
multigenerational triptych that portrays the consequences of spiritual
malaise, and in "Brightly Shines the Stars Tonight," a general wrestles
with issues of memory and self-perception in the final moments before
his execution.
Guo Songfen's stories play with the hazards of miscommunication, the
malevolence of human will, the arbitrary nature of fate, and the burden
of historical circumstance. As the general discovers, life is a game of
chess, the outcome of which is never certain though it might be
logically designed. Showcasing the best of Taiwan's modernist style,
these stories are not only an indictment of the human condition but also
a powerful comment on the experience of postretrocession Taiwan.
