Spirit is a novel by Yi Shu. The heroine, Zhou Doumiao, seems from the age of six to possess an indefinable ability: she can "see" what others hide in their hearts and knows some things before they happen. On her sixth birthday, the diamond ring her aunt is to receive as a wedding gift disappears; the whole household is at a loss, but Doumiao points straight to the ring in the belly of the family cat, Fugui—and so it is. This gift astonishes those around her; some say her mind is so clear that she can see across the Pacific. Yet to those closest to her, these brightest eyes in the world cannot see her own future. Doumiao really wants only to be an ordinary child and grow up slowly. But as she grows, she discovers that her mother is not her birth mother, and the mystery of her origins becomes a thorn in her heart; in love, she often knows at first sight of a man roughly how the relationship will end. Seeing too clearly, she dares not commit; knowing in advance that she will be hurt, she simply shuts the door of her heart. Some envy her clarity, while she herself is torn between reason and feeling. A character in the book voices the telling line: "You know everything; you look at life as if you were reading a book." "What pleasure is there in that? Seeing too thoroughly, there is no sorrow or joy left." The novel uses the slightly supernatural premise of mind-reading and precognition as an entry point, but what it explores remains Yi Shu's enduring themes: modern urban women's self-knowledge, the truth of family ties, and the choices of love. The prose is concise and restrained, the pace light, the length short; it reads easily but leaves an aftertaste.
China Women Publishing House focuses on publishing for women, children and family life. Its books in this collection show a general-reading direction that covers foreign literature, social-science classics, health and inspirational growth, and parenting, balancing classic works with practical titles. Representative books include The Stranger, The Great Gatsby, Kokoro, the full-colour collected edition of Father and Son, What Life Could Mean to You, Parents: The Challenge, The Crowd and The Sleep Solution. Its author resources include foreign writers such as Albert Camus, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Natsume Sōseki, E. O. Plauen and Alfred Adler, as well as Chinese editors and authors such as Lü Yang, Wang Chuang and Yue Ling. Overall, the press features introduced classics and family-growth reading for ordinary readers and parent-child education. Public information is limited, and the above is based mainly on the books held in the collection.
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