Solace for Loneliness

Solace for Loneliness is a short story collection by the Hong Kong writer Yi Shu, containing eleven stories: Grief, The Older Woman, The Real and the Fake Beauty, Solace for Loneliness, Life Assistant, A Passionate Heart, The Wedding, As Long as You Love Enough, The Will, The System, and Run Away. The title captures the book's central theme, voiced in one of its lines: loneliness is like fine wine, growing stronger the longer it brews; no one else can comfort it, and only the self can offer solace. The characters in these eleven stories are mostly busy, clear-eyed women in the city: some stand alone in the workplace only to find that professional achievement cannot fill a private emptiness; some, afraid of being hurt, handle their emotions as cleanly and efficiently as a program; some slowly lose themselves in the routines of marriage and family until they can no longer recall their former faces. The Real and the Fake Beauty is set in the metropolis of 2175 and, through lifelike robots and memory modification, explores why people still feel lonely even when technology can substitute for companionship. Yi Shu writes in her usual brief, restrained, slightly sharp style, neither sentimental nor preachy, laying bare the distance and self-possession between city dwellers for readers to see for themselves: life must go on, and loneliness can be housed, but it is hard to truly dissolve. The book was published by China Women's Publishing House in 2009 as part of the Yi Shu New Classics series, authorized by Cosmos Books Ltd.