The short story collection "Float" by Nguyen Ngoc Tu has just been released, consisting of 13 short stories, presented very elegantly and containing many stories that are not easy to imagine...
The concept of “drifting” appeared in Nguyen Ngoc Tu’s writing quite early, perhaps the writer felt it from the very beginning. Perhaps, it was not until “Drifting” (Tre Publishing House - 2023) that everything became more evident. It was when everything broke out and drifted, in all directions. An explosion and then, each person, each object, each event, each sentence drifted in a different way, extremely different, and perhaps the most typical is the drifting of a younger sister, drifting endlessly in a “drunk state of mind”. “Suddenly the whole country split into seven pieces, its insides turned into cardboard. Tu Dien floated away with his wife’s sewing machine, a basket of colorful threads, and several sets of clothes that had not yet been delivered to customers… Chuong, who was toothless, wore only shorts, floating with a stone table with a checkered top, a few bundles of grass for goats to eat, and a pair of old geese… Old man Ba Hao floated away on a mother-of-pearl chair, sobbing as the piece of land he was sitting on kept splitting apart. Little boy Muoi Hai floated away from Binh Di, completely naked… The son floated away with dozens of students in the same class, the teacher called me to tell the parents not to leave any rice… My father floated away with a bunch of balloons when he passed Ba Cat market. I floated away with the candleberry tree”. Then maybe we would “get stuck” somewhere, or not, just float all the way to the Sea of Water.
A slice of contemporary life is always present somewhere, lingering around each person. The tired "waiting" mentality lasts day after day, month after month, when the character is in the posture of waiting to leave for another world of many people in this bustling contemporary life. The first day, he was still "waiting for someone to visit", so Ly kept looking out the door, until he "left". "Every time I saw someone sitting at the door, it was like a new resident. They were still waiting for the shadows of people coming to visit. Staying at the nursing home for half a year, I knew there was nothing out there". There, the days and months seemed to no longer exist. At the beginning of the short story "Waiting", Nguyen Ngoc Tu opened up a multidimensional space so that readers could see their own shadow somewhere in any corner: "I am sitting in June. Or it is already November. But what does the date matter to me, every day is exactly the same..."; or like: "I am waiting in the middle of June. Or it is now September, maybe". The waiting states of different characters, from waiting for patient Niem to “burp”, waiting for character Ly to “go”… are interwoven, compressing many emotions for the reader.
Nguyen Ngoc Tu's four stories are very unique and carefully selected. Therefore, sometimes they are condensed into a single word: "Floating", "Waiting", "Debt". Many other stories are full of evocative power: "Between here and there", "Between this material", "Towards nowhere", "Dreaming of people", "Faraway hunger"... Then add: "The beginning of the wind", "Swinging in a cocoon", "Cold fire in the sky", "Chlorophyll rain" or "By the door".
Stories that cannot be easily imagined. A couple suddenly wants to dump pancakes on the plane, followed by a long breakup that the wife sometimes does not understand why? That is a difficult debt passed down from generation to generation in the story "Debt", and eventually people do not understand and do not want to accept that debt. In "Swinging in the cocoon", a strange old man appears: addicted to the hammock all his life and does not want to step out of the hammock. In "Towards nowhere" is the story of the strange Li people. One person was imprisoned simply because he liked to break into other people's houses to watch them sleep in "Dreaming of people".
According to writer Nguyen Ngoc Tu: "No drifting is accidental, the drifting itself is a message, a signal, an invitation from the horizon. Sooner or later, someone will accept."
The “word energy” of Nguyen Ngoc Tu in “Float” contained in each short story is quite large, after reading it, you will realize how many things to ponder. That is the very special writing style that makes Nguyen Ngoc Tu’s brand, each word is worth reading.
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