In English the versatile suffix “ish” captures the somewhatness of something, as when we call a cloud “whitish” or say “Life is normal. Ish.” In Dorothy Tse’s whimsical satire about a version of contemporary Hong Kong going through hellish transformations, Owlish – “something like an owl but also not like an owl” – is a wise and elusive character who quotes from the Bible, speaks in a coded language, and appears and disappears randomly. Regardless of who or what Owlish is, they must find a way “to survive” as “who knows what will happen next? Everything is changing.”
Owlish is an old friend of Prof Q, “a hack teacher in a debased, cultureless little city” who, despite a long-term marriage to the near-perfect Maria, has fallen in love with Aliss, an animated lifesize ballerina doll. “I’m in a spot of trouble,” Q says. “What you need is a love nest,” Owlish replies. A wild tale of a failed love affair, the novel might be seen as a literary version of what Stanley Cavell dubbed the Hollywood “comedy of remarriage”. Katherine Hepburn could play the “luminously beautiful” Maria, but Prof Q is definitely not Cary Grant.
