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Professor Q, the protagonist of Dorothy Tse’s novel Owlish, is in many ways a model citizen of the city-island state of Nevers: he has a stable job, a nice apartment and a beautiful and successful wife. He’s also a bit of a weirdo—when his wife is out, he’s “playing” with his secret collection of dolls.
Yet that’s not even half as weird as the chain of events that unfolds after Q spots a new doll in the window of an antiques shop, a life-size ballerina called Aliss. A secluded island retreat in an abandoned church; “romantic” interludes on the back of a rocking horse; and the machinations of a surreal magician… all converge to create a less-than-touching love story that may or may not involve only one person (though, so vivid are Q’s fantasies, we can never be sure).
Meanwhile, things in Nevers are changing. Students are protesting; walls are being put up; policemen with truncheons are on the beat. But Q takes no heed of any of this—he’s in too deep with Aliss.
Reality is a liquid concept throughout Tse’s novel, meaning it can be tricky to know where we find ourselves in the story: is Q’s love affair the product of dreaming, fantasy or just plain madness? What is really happening and what isn’t?
But perhaps this constant questioning is Tse’s intention, as a reflection of the lives lived by the citizens of Nevers and its (very much real-life) counterpart in modern-day Hong Kong. When suppression and censorship are the order of the day, who’s to say that what happens in the only free space that remains, our dreams, is any less real?
