The Wounded Ivy

Scarred Vine is the debut novel of author Huang Danli, first published by Guangxi People's Publishing House in 2009. Set in the alleys of Suzhou in June, where the bluestone slabs bear witness to the stories of several young people—Mi Lingyi, Yu Jing, Lu Shujie, and Jizi—the novel explores the aesthetic beauty of love, the inclusiveness of family affection, and the good and evil of human nature. Like the ever-spreading vines of ivy, these emotions grow through young lives, producing scene after scene of restrained sorrow. The emotional throughline of the book is the relationship between two half-sisters living under the same roof: the younger sister, Mi Lingyi, is kind, strong, and forbearing, while the elder, Jizi, rendered withdrawn and suspicious by the lack of familial love in her childhood, lashes out like a hedgehog—hurting the family who love her as a way of wreaking revenge on fate, though each act of coldness and hysteria wounds her more deeply still. Over sixteen years, the gulf between the two is pulled back and forth through sacrifice, misunderstanding, and repeated attempts at reconciliation, while the city of Suzhou harbors secrets unknown to all. Writing in a light-blue key with fresh, lucid prose, the author captures the dialect, scenery, and food of Jiangnan's back alleys, interweaving the pain of youthful growth with the small, ordinary loves of daily life. The novel comprises fourteen chapters and an epilogue, most chapter titles composed in poetic parallel couplets. The "vine" of the title serves both as a metaphor for entangled emotions and as a symbol of the setbacks and rebirth that come with growing up. The book runs to roughly 190,000 Chinese characters.