The sense of belonging is a human need. To belong is to be accepted, to find value and comfort in life through shared experiences and connection. Xiaolu Guo’s A Lover’s Discourse is a beautiful exploration of this very idea – a story of love and the innate need to belong told through fragments of conversation.
Xiaolu Guo
A Chinese woman seeks a new life in London, leaving behind her deceased parents to explore her yearning to be a ‘woman of the world’. Despite knowing it would be lonely, she struggles with the desolation of not belonging. Can her burgeoning relationship with an Australian-British-German landscape architect give her the home she seeks? Taking place on the cusp of the Brexit vote, this is a story of culture, identity, intimacy and belonging.
Language and love are interwoven with delicacy in each conversation. Guo brilliantly uses language to tie the narrator to her culture and identity, temporarily filling the emptiness she experiences with familiarity. Throughout the book, German and Chinese phrases are used to highlight places where the English language is lacking in expressing deep, particular emotions such as the German fernweh (distant pain, or an ache for a place where you want to belong) or the Chinese wu-wo (a sense of non-existence, where the body is present but you do not feel like you exist).
Home and belonging are recurring points of pain for the narrator, who struggles to find her place in the world. The particular sentiment is of being rootless, which intensifies as she transitions between different physical homes; a cramped flat to an unmoored houseboat to the German countryside. Guo reinforces this hollowness without being overbearing, reminding us of the importance of connection in happiness and fulfilment.
Xiaolu Guo narrows in on the small, passing moments in a relationship with warmth and authenticity, while tackling the larger questions of identity and belonging. The short, snapshot moments are heavy with emotion, making A Lover’s Discourse a story that will linger in your mind.
—A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo (Penguin Books Australia) is out now.
A Lover's Discourse
A Chinese woman comes to London to start a new life, away from her old world. She knew she would be lonely, adrift in the city, but will her new relationship bring her closer to this land she has chosen, will their love give her a home?
A Lover’s Discourse is an exploration of romantic love told through fragments of conversations between the two lovers. Playing with language and the cultural differences that her narrator encounters as she settles into life in a post-Brexit Britain, Xiaolu Guo shows us how this couple navigate these differences, and their romance…
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