Coming from real life, literature is unified but not identical with life. In addition to the high requirements of life experience and talent, the author must also present a new perspective. That perspective is expressed in the narrator with his own words, in the characters through their way of addressing, way of life... bearing their own mark. Creating a work with a new model is not easy. In the past ten years, there have been consecutive novels such as "Lost in the human world", "Once upon a time friends", "Cot cot", "Chuyen lang", "Mua ruoi" (Season of earthworms), most recently, Pham Quang Long added "Chuyen pho" (Vietnamese Women's Publishing House, 2024).

Book cover.

Recreating the life of Mr. Muu's family, a typical native of Hanoi, more deeply and concentratedly after the renovation period (1986). Talented in business, Mr. Muu is somewhat helpless before the thoughts, concepts and relationships of his children, although living in the same house, each person behaves differently. Life in the market economy period seems to be concentrated in the space of a villa of thousands of square meters in the old town. There are tricks, tricks and also nobility, altruism... That is the surface. In the face of conflicts between old and new values, the underground stream of family culture that has been flowing for thousands of years, according to the law, now emerges to fight to create a "balance" of life.

A parallel structure throughout the novel is the story of the character Tuan - a journalist, a veteran entering the renovation period, still with the same old spirit, fierce, honest, straightforward. The story of teacher Lang, a university lecturer, full of passion for research, gentle in behavior, delicate in speech. These two streams of characters have their own concepts and views, both "converging" into the cultural space of Mr. Muu's family - which already has many conflicting and contradictory concepts. So there are countless voices that both reflect on each other and refract through each other, creating debates and questions that have the power to invite dialogue with readers. The appeal of this novel lies in the art of creating dialogues and inviting dialogues.

Looking from the space of the ancient house, readers seem to see the shadow of the ancient "first period of the Capital" cast in every ancient detail, and imagine the people of that time gentle, neat and also measured, square like the same windows, and also "moss-covered"... Looking at the time, that person mainly lies at the beginning of the lively renovation period, full of new orientations, unprecedented livelihood plans... The novel ends with the scene where Mr. Muu does not divide the house and garden but divides the gold among his 4 children, each person 100 trees. This is a remarkable cultural code of the novel, as if to say: Gold is very precious but is only a means of exchange, so it is easily divided. As for the house and garden, they are priceless. Because that is the identity, the tradition that must be worshiped and preserved together.

Author Pham Quang Long has many advantages when writing about "street stories", as a literary researcher (associate professor, doctorate in Literary Theory), as a management officer (former Vice President of Hanoi National University, former Director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Hanoi City), from his knowledge of the countryside (old Thai Binh ), from his foreign cultural background (as a graduate student, intern, exchanger, tour), having spent a long enough time in the "street" (50 years), he was able to "reveal" many new, funny, interesting features; many new, profound, and subtle interpretations.

The work “Chuyen pho” demonstrates a high ability to generalize when the narrative space is a compression of a multi-colored miniature picture of modern Vietnamese society with many different fates but still exudes a bright look on the horizon of tomorrow. The image of the narrator lurking behind the words is both surprised and astonished by a discovery and also cunning and shrewd as if he already knows every corner of life and of people. This gives the novel a rare tone today: a tone that is ambiguous, like a joke, like a real one.

    Source: https://www.qdnd.vn/van-hoa/sach/doi-thoai-trong-chuyen-pho-1010464