Tears in the Sky

Tears in the Sky is a full-length youth novel by Yan An, a writer born in the 1990s, published by Haitian Publishing House in 2009. The story begins with the meeting of two girls: Ye Zi and Ding Tian get to know each other at a hair salon, support one another, and form a friendship like twin flowers. Later the two agree to meet again at a bar, where Ye Zi meets Gu Zesheng and falls in love with him at first sight; but Gu Zesheng is the son of Ding Tian's stepfather, and the one he cares for is Ding Tian. Each of the three young people harbors private feelings, and in the gap where family affection and love cross, they lose their footing, and the originally simple sisterly bond is quietly rewritten. A car accident strikes suddenly, breaking the deadlock and changing Gu Zesheng's feelings, and the relationship among the three takes an unexpected turn. The book uses multiple points of view, takes 'midsummer' as its central image, and lets Ye Zi, Ding Tian, and Gu Zesheng take turns speaking across four parts, with the epilogue returning to Ye Zi's perspective to draw the whole passage of the past together. With delicate strokes the author moves between the realistic and the beautiful, writing the fog of youth, loneliness, and a faint ache at length; reviewers have called the prose 'like warm, moist jade.' The work depicts family restructuring, the confusion of growing up, and adolescent emotion, and shows how a misunderstood youth seeks comfort in friendship.