The Painted Skin

Yi ShuChina Women Publishing House Co., Ltd.2011

Rating 3.6
Series
Yi Shu New Classics · Zhongfu Edition
ISBN
9787512701731

Tags

Featured Fiction Women's Fiction Moral DilemmaHeartwarming NarrativeFull-Length NovelSinophone LiteratureHong Kong LiteratureFemale PerspectiveUrban Women

Summary

The Painted Skin is a novel by the Hong Kong writer Yi Shu. Its title is taken from the famous tale of the same name in Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, but the story is relocated to contemporary urban life. The protagonist, Wenchang, is eighteen when she is in a car accident: her parents are killed, and her own face is destroyed. Repeated skin grafts fail because of cell rejection, so she must wear a mask in public for a long time, hiding her real scars behind a painted face. Her elder sister, Wenjing, hires a highly skilled makeup artist; made up, Wenjing looks twenty years younger, and even her husband fails to recognize his wife, absurdly pursuing the beautiful stranger instead. This turns Wenchang's interest toward the craft of makeup. She studies under the artist and applies her solid grounding in art to painting prosthetics: she paints skin tones, knuckles, nails, and veins onto the artificial limbs of disabled children, making them look like real limbs and helping the children enter the world more naturally. Her skill grows; she opens a studio with her mentor and a fellow apprentice, and she also goes through a partner's jealousy, misplaced love, and illness in the family. Taking appearance as its thread, the novel shows how an urban woman carves out a place for herself among looks, money, love, and self-respect, and it also shows the calculation and sincerity hidden behind pretty faces.

Editor's review

提起《画皮》，多数人想到的是蒲松龄笔下那张夜里描绘、白天披上的美人皮；亦舒则把这个意象移进写字楼、美容室和家庭餐桌之间。她写的不是鬼，而是人：为留住婚姻去“变年轻”的姐姐，被一场车祸夺去容貌、日夜戴面具的妹妹，以及那些只看脸、不看人的目光。全书篇幅不长，节奏轻快，对白锋利，是亦舒成熟期典型的都市小说写法，读来毫不费力，却又处处见机锋。可贵的是，它并不把“美”当作罪过，也不廉价地歌颂“内在美”，而是让女主人公靠一门实实在在的手艺立身：把义肢画得逼真，让残缺的人少受一点异样的眼光。这份职业设定，比任何说教都更有力量。书中关于化妆品的成分不分贵贱、关于女人要有积蓄、关于合伙人之间再难回到从前的议论，多年后读来仍不过时。适合在一个晚上读完，然后在合上书时想一想：我脸上这一层，是画给谁的？

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Reading tips

  1. 先读蒲松龄《聊斋志异》中的《画皮》原文，再对照阅读，看亦舒如何把“鬼披人皮”翻转为现代都市的容貌与面具。
  2. 留意书中关于化妆、义肢绘制与职业选择的段落，它们是理解女主人公成长的关键。
  3. 全书篇幅短，可一口气读完；读后可记下两三句最触动自己的对白，回味亦舒式的人生观。
  4. 若喜欢本书，可继续读《玫瑰的故事》《流金岁月》等亦舒代表作，比较她对女性独立的不同写法。

About the publisher

China Women Publishing House Co., Ltd. China · Founded in 1981

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.

FAQ

亦舒的《画皮》与《聊斋志异》的《画皮》是什么关系？ 两者是借用关系而非改编。亦舒取蒲松龄《画皮》中“披着美人皮”的意象，把场景移到当代香港都市，写化妆、整容与面具背后的人心，故事人物和情节与原著并无直接对应。
这本书大概讲哪方面的故事？ 围绕一对姐妹展开：姐姐靠高超化妆术重获青春，妹妹因车祸毁容而长期戴面具，后来学习化妆并把它用于为残疾儿童的义肢上色。小说借“皮相”探讨容貌、金钱、自尊与都市人情。
没有读过亦舒的其他作品，可以直接读这本吗？ 可以。本书是独立长篇，人物与情节不依赖其他作品，篇幅也不长，适合作为进入亦舒小说的入门读物；读完若喜欢她的文风，再读代表作会更顺。
这本书是不是惊悚或灵异小说？ 不是。书中没有鬼怪出场，虽然书名和开篇都致敬《聊斋志异》，整体仍是亦舒一贯的都市女性小说，语气冷静克制，偶有讽刺，但不营造恐怖氛围。

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About the author

Yi Shu Author

Yi Shu is a widely read author in the Chinese-speaking world, though public information about her remains limited, with no clear record of her nationality or dates of birth and death. The collection includes 108 of her works, spanning quality fiction, women's fiction, literature, classical literature, prose and miscellaneous writings, and fiction for female readers, showing that her writing crosses both narrative fiction and the personal essay. Representative works include When the Grapes Ripen, If Walls Could Talk, Across the Four Seas, A Night Without a Moon, A Fleeting Bloom, Until the Flowers Fade, Till the Seas Run Dry, and Asura. Judging from these titles and categories, she often takes the emotions, lives, and circumstances of urban women as her point of entry, writing in a calm and restrained tone and using everyday detail to reveal her characters' psychological turns, so that her stories, under a light surface, offer a clear-eyed view of life's meetings and partings and have thus long circulated among Chinese-language readers.