Mu

Mu is a short story collection by the Hong Kong writer Yi Shu. It gathers eleven stories: By the Pond, Danwei, The Eldest Young Lady, Marriage, Aunt Rose, Mu, Boyfriend, The Affair, The Play, Another Three Years, and One Night. Published in 1984 by Hong Kong's Cosmos Books as part of the Yi Shu Works Collection, these stories continue the basic material of Yi Shu's early short fiction: urban men and women meeting and missing each other, calculation and weariness inside and outside marriage, and the loneliness behind a respectable life. The characters are mostly office white-collar workers, middle-class residents of the Mid-Levels, and old friends returning from abroad. They lack neither money nor suitors; what they usually lack is someone to talk to and genuine romantic excitement. The author advances the plot with short sentences and short paragraphs, and the dialogue is crisp and clean. She often closes with a cold turn in the final line, laying the characters' self-deception, compromise, or clarity plainly before the reader. The female figures are especially noteworthy: they settle for being able to marry, and once they realize the other person is not a fellow traveler, they quietly change their hairstyle, withdraw their expectations, and preserve a little dignity in their own way. Yi Shu does not write fierce accusations or offer happy endings; she simply presents the true texture of urban emotion. This Cosmos edition features illustrations by Wang Sima, which is relatively rare among Yi Shu's works.