Fu Ruxin's novel "A Pond of Lotus" (Published by Huacheng Publishing House in September 2021) has a vivid and smooth narrative, and the plot is unpredictable. It is a mature novelist's sophisticated pen and ink.
At the same time, I also found that this novel also benefited from Fu Ruxin's long-term literary criticism.
His clear rational thinking enables him to have an accurate grasp of the characters' behavior and logic, and can handle the relationship between the characters' personal destiny and the historical trend with ease.
The novel tells about the different fates and choices of the three sisters, and is a symphony of fate intertwined with big history and small history.
The three sisters grew up in an ordinary family in a rural village in the south of Liaoning in the northeast. Father Lu Si, relying on the ancestral skill of frying peanuts, lived a better life than ordinary farm families.
Although the three daughters have different personalities, they are all obedient children. In addition to helping their father to fry peanuts every day, they also roll cigarettes for the Yingkou Cigarette Factory at home.
Such an ordinary family obviously hopes that the world is safe and sound, so that their life can not only go on normally, but also get better.
But the big history they are facing is that wars are frequent, the days of fear under the occupation of the Japanese invaders have just ended, and the guns around them sounded again.
The core of the story is the love and marriage of the three sisters, which is also their father's greatest worry.
The three sisters are involved in the process of great changes in history because of their love and marriage.
Fu Ruxin wants to express "the fate of ordinary people in the big history", to see how an ordinary person perseveres under the impact of big history, and sticks to their ordinary but original heart.
The eldest sister, Lu Fang, married Fang Qiye, who is a famous local legend; the second sister, Lu Qiu, fell in love with the mayor of Tian Zhen after the Communist Party seized power; The regiment leader Gao saw it at a glance, and since then he has entered the revolutionary ranks and become a soldier.
Their fate has also changed because of this, but Fu Ruxin is not making a big fuss about change, but making a big fuss about perseverance.
Although the three sisters have very different personalities, Fu Ruxin endowed them with the same kind heart.
It can be said that they have been nurtured for many years in an ordinary family that keeps upright.
Fu Ruxin used a lot of pen and ink to write their kind hearts, which made them have a kind of autonomy in the face of the powerful force of big history.
They are not passive and can make active choices.
For example, when the three sisters met Fang Qiye for the first time, they were both attracted by his masculinity and thought that a man should marry such a man.
But Lu Fang promised to marry him as the third concubine, not because she envied his identity and property, but because she was grateful to Fang Qiye for helping her father heal her ill and saving her sister Lu Yun from the bandits.
Another example is that after she entered the square house, because she was tired of the calculations between the wives, she did not miss the pampered life here, and left when it was time to leave.
Later, Fang Qiye was arrested and imprisoned, and she appealed for Fang Qiye regardless of her personal safety.
Another example is that Lu Yun participated in the revolutionary team. She also established a sincere love with Colonel Gao in the difficult and dangerous war environment. The relationship between the two is estranged.
Later, Head Gao suffered repeated misfortunes, but Lu Yun was still trying to rescue him and caring about him.
For the three sisters, kindness is their nature, and Fu Ruxin's repeated writing is like wiping it repeatedly, making their kind nature more and more vivid.
Fu Ruxin gave the novel a very special name.
He wrote the three sisters as three unstained lotus flowers in the lotus pond.
Therefore, the three sisters in his works also like lotus flowers very much. There is a lotus pond not far from their house. They often come to the pond to play, especially when the lotus flowers are in full bloom, they will linger here and pick a few lotus flowers. in your own boudoir.
In Fu Ruxin's heart, there is actually a bigger lotus pond. This big lotus pond is the society at that time. He regards those ordinary people who can keep the original heart as a lotus flower, which is still open and withered in the state of wind and rain.
This is also the ideological highlight of the novel.
The masses of the people are like the lotus blooming in the lotus pond. They come out of the mud and are not stained. They decorate the world with clean and bright colors, which sets off the brilliance of the great changes in history.
The three sisters in the novel come from the ordinary, and finally return to the ordinary. They have very precious and lovely qualities, which are condensed by the outlook on life and ethics and morality with a broad mass base.
(Author: He Shaojun, Vice President of Chinese Contemporary Literature Research Association)