Owlish by Dorothy Tse, Trans. by Natascha Bruce
“He didn’t know what he would turn into, but out there in the pitch-black embrace of the ocean he felt his cramping legs start to crumble, until eventually they disappeared. This was why, when the magic box was finally opened, and someone extended a hand to pull him onto shore, he didn’t know how to follow their orders and run for it.”
Owlish (2023) by Dorothy Tse is the second of her works to be translated into English. Her first, a collection of short stories, won the Hong Kong Book Prize in 2013.
Taking place in the “shimmering, mirrored facades” of a city called Nevers, a semi-fictional representation of Hong Kong, Tse creates a world that appears smooth and functional but, like a room of funhouse mirrors, the reality is something much more distorted and unnerving. Our protagonist is an ageing, self-involved “hack teacher” we know only as Professor Q. Passed over for tenure twice, unfulfilled by his marriage to government employee Maria and overall quiet life, Professor Q harbours a secret: his collection of vintage dolls.
Professor Q has collected an eclectic assortment of dolls that he keeps hidden from Maria, bringing them out to clean, care, and ‘play’ with when his wife works late:
“The dolls were carefully locked away in a cupboard in Professor Q’s study… as soon as he opened its door, he would marvel all over again at how deep and wide it was and how compelling its contents. Somethings were like that: their presence feels indelible until you push them out of sight, and they disappear, at least for a while.”
The dolls, stored away in this fashion, hidden and shameful, seem to echo a prophecy throughout the book of suppression, cover-ups and looking the other way, hinted at from the first pages as Professor Q dodges students at his university hurriedly trying to hand out protest literature.
Tse utilises the device of magical realism, with motifs of clowns, magicians, music boxes and metamorphoses appearing throughout. When Professor Q searches for a doll whose eyes he is haunted by after first spotting it in a crowded market street, he is led down a bizarre, underground rabbit hole of umbrella keys, masked bourgeoisie and charismatic antique dealers. In the dark of what appears to be a secret auction, he finds his doll – a lifesize mechanical ballerina who dances when the mechanism of her music box stage is wound in a specific way. Instead of bidding, the auctioneer claims that whoever has an ‘X’ marked on their palm will go home with the doll, named Aliss. Though Professor Q has no such mark, a spotlight lands on him and in a confusing whirlwind of events, he leaves with his prize.
With nowhere to hide Aliss in his study, Professor Q finds a small island with an abandoned church to store her in for his own enjoyment. He takes pleasure in cleaning her, grooming her hair, and dressing her up – amongst other less savoury pursuits. Life, it seems, can get no better for Professor Q until he returns to the church one day to find Aliss is much more than she seems:
“The object locked in the darkness was half asleep, half waiting to wake up. Creaking hesitantly, the heavy door of the antique music box was being pushed open from the inside.”
A central question for the reader throughout Owlish is determining what is real and what isn’t: how does one really know they’re awake? Fresh chapters start immersed in Professor Q’s dreams or memories of dreams, and the timeline moves forwards and backwards for much of the book. The eponymous character, Owlish, appears sporadically with tidbits of advice for Professor Q, but we’re never certain who this person is or if they’re even real.
Tse draws on recent parts of Hong Kong's history, particularly the suppression of the 2019 protests, and feeds us subtle hints that we’re only allowed to pay as much attention to as Professor Q himself (which is very little). Much like the magicians Professor Q encounters, it often feels like a sleight of hand is happening on the page, and if we look away, we’ll miss the key to the trick.
Early in the book, Professor Q is warned by an elderly stranger, “No such thing as beautiful or unbeautiful here. You see what you want to see.” This comes to fruition as he becomes so obsessed with his illicit life with Aliss that he fails to notice that students have ceased attending his classes. While driving around with Aliss, he is so focused on returning to the church that he fails to fully acknowledge or question the protest and riots in the streets that he tries to dodge.
Professor Q’s dream can’t last forever. In scenes reminiscent of the overbearing authoritarianism of Orwell’s 1984 , he is summoned in front of the authorities, who have discovered that his church is a secret doorway to a shadow realm where student protestors are hiding. By agreeing to turn over the church, they offer Professor Q tenure and the opportunity to have all incriminating evidence of his misdeeds wiped clean.
In renaming the key places of Owlish, Nevers for Hong Kong, Ksana for China, and Valeria for Britain, Tse transforms the political relations between these places into something of a fable, but it’s only the names that change – everything else holds true to reality.
Readers like myself, who aren’t too educated on the history of Hong Kong, its political narratives and the recent protests, may struggle initially to get to grips with what Owlish attempts to portray. Tse also draws on a broad range of prior literature and narratives that, with a little external reading, help deepen the storytelling - without this, I would have struggled to pull the pieces of this puzzle together more firmly. My suggestion is to see this as an invitation to learn a little more about the real-life narratives that are too often hidden away from us.
With surrealist humour, Owlish is an interesting genre-bending read that asks us to question what we think we know about our reality, what it means to be ‘awake’, and encourages us to seek information far beyond its pages.
Elaine Chennatt is a writer, educator and psychology student currently residing in nipaluna. She has a special interest in bibliotherapy (how we use literature to make sense of our lives) and is endlessly curious about the creative philosophies of others. She lives with her husband and two bossy dachshunds on the not-so-sunny side of the river (IYKYK). Find her online at wordswithelaine.com.
