Please Don't Take It Back

Yi ShuCosmos Books Ltd.1986

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Chapters
4
Series
Yi Shu Works
ISBN
9789622570672

Tags

Featured Fiction Women's Fiction Private DetectiveSerial CharacterHuman NatureNovellasNovella CollectionNarrative ModeRomance NovelHong Kong Taiwan LiteratureHong Kong WriterHong Kong Literature

Summary

Please Don't Take It Back is a collection of novellas by the Hong Kong writer Yi Shu, published as No. 67 in the "Yi Shu Works" series by Cosmos Books in 1986 (with later reprints including a 1992 edition). The volume gathers four novellas: "The Secret," "New Love," "Mother and Daughter," and the title piece "Please Don't Take It Back." The first three are known collectively as the "Xiao Guo Investigates" series, featuring a private detective named Xiao Guo. Xiao Guo first appeared as a character in Ni Kuang's Wesley series and was borrowed by Yi Shu to become the lead of her own series; he runs a small detective agency and takes on cases mostly involving love and family, from gathering evidence of a husband's affair to probing the tangled questions of "New Love" and "Mother and Daughter," with a light, self-mocking tone that ultimately lands on human nature. The title novella, "Please Don't Take It Back," shifts narrative mode: a first-person "Xiao Bei" recounts growing up alongside the boy next door, A Qi. A Qi is quiet and forbearing, while Xiao Bei always finds him dull. As teenagers they fall out over a trivial matter and then sulk separately, until the words "don't take back the affection you once gave me" resolve the knot. Yi Shu's style remains one or two sentences per paragraph, concise and brisk, and within the sense of propriety between urban men and women lies a lingering attachment to old friendships.

Editor's review

亦舒的读者常把她的作品分成两类：一类是《玫瑰的故事》《圆舞》那样写尽都市男女的传奇长篇，另一类则是篇幅不长、却最能看出她观人之准的中短篇集。《请勿收回》属于后者。一册四篇，前三篇借“小郭探案”的壳子，让一个开小侦探社的人替委托人翻检感情里的疑心、算计与委屈；查案只是引子，真正被审视的是人在爱情里的姿态：谁在装，谁在忍，谁放不下。同题的《请勿收回》笔调一转，回到旧街两户人家，写一对从小一起长大的男女，说话都别扭，心意却分明。亦舒不擅长（也不屑于）铺陈煽情，一两句一段的短句反而让情绪留了白，读到最后那句“千万不要收回”，才觉出落寞与温热一齐上来。喜欢她长篇的读者，不妨从这样的短篇集看她运笔的轻与准；第一次读亦舒的人，这册也是合适的入门。

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Reading tips

  1. 先读同题篇《请勿收回》，感受亦舒写少年情谊的笔调，再回头看三篇小郭探案。
  2. 读“小郭探案”时可留意小郭这一角色与倪匡卫斯理系列的渊源，能多一层阅读趣味。
  3. 亦舒段落极短而快，建议一次读完一篇，不要在长断点处停下，情节节奏才连得上。
  4. 若读过《玫瑰的故事》《圆舞》，可对照看她在短篇里如何用对话代替铺陈。

About the publisher

Cosmos Books Ltd.

Cosmos Books Ltd. is a publisher centered on literary publishing, with 27 titles in the collection covering literature, essays and miscellaneous writings, quality fiction, women's fiction, emotional fiction, and wuxia novels. Judging from its representative titles, its publishing profile balances popular narrative with serious writing: works close to everyday experience such as The Manual and A Diary of a Student in Britain appear alongside novels including Ke Ren Er, Yuhua, Bu Er Xin, and Xiao Ren Er, as well as Liang Yusheng's martial-arts serials The Ice River Sword-Washing Record (four volumes) and The Extraordinary Heroine Emperor (three volumes). In terms of authors, Yi Shu and Liang Yusheng form important creative pillars—the former associated with women's and emotional themes, the latter representing the wuxia tradition. Overall, the press leans toward Chinese-language literary creation, with fiction and essays at its core, while also presenting genre literature. Due to limited public information, its founding background and full publishing scale cannot currently be confirmed.

Contents

  1. The Secret (Xiao Guo Investigates 1)
  2. New Love (Xiao Guo Investigates 2)
  3. Mother and Daughter (Xiao Guo Investigates 3)
  4. Please Don't Take It Back

FAQ

《请勿收回》是什么类型的书？ 它是亦舒的中篇小说集，收四篇：《秘》《新爱》《母女》和同题的《请勿收回》。前三篇属于“小郭探案”系列，写侦探处理与情感有关的委托；同题篇则写一对青梅竹马男女的心事。
这本书里的“小郭”是倪匡笔下的那个小郭吗？ 书中角色确有借用关系。小郭最早在倪匡的卫斯理系列中出现，亦舒把他借到自己作品里写成主角，名字与设定有所改动，读者一般视作致敬式的互文，而非同一人物。
这本书有简体中文版吗？ 目前常见的是天地图书出版的繁体中文版，如1986年初版及1992年等重印本，ISBN 为 9789622570672。简体版本不常见，购买或借阅时请以实际版本信息为准。
没读过亦舒其他作品，能直接读这本吗？ 可以。四篇相对独立，不依赖前作。不过“小郭探案”三篇属同一系列，篇中人物关系前后有照应，连着读会更顺。

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About the author

Yi Shu Author

Yi Shu is a widely read author in the Chinese-speaking world, though public information about her remains limited, with no clear record of her nationality or dates of birth and death. The collection includes 108 of her works, spanning quality fiction, women's fiction, literature, classical literature, prose and miscellaneous writings, and fiction for female readers, showing that her writing crosses both narrative fiction and the personal essay. Representative works include When the Grapes Ripen, If Walls Could Talk, Across the Four Seas, A Night Without a Moon, A Fleeting Bloom, Until the Flowers Fade, Till the Seas Run Dry, and Asura. Judging from these titles and categories, she often takes the emotions, lives, and circumstances of urban women as her point of entry, writing in a calm and restrained tone and using everyday detail to reveal her characters' psychological turns, so that her stories, under a light surface, offer a clear-eyed view of life's meetings and partings and have thus long circulated among Chinese-language readers.