part of a series of twelve readings all marvelous to listen to.
Tremain on Yiyun
This is a beautifully crafted and moving short story, one of many adroit and affecting pieces in Yiyun Li's award-winning collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. It's a story of how a blameless person, Granny Lin, finds herself blamed and punished, in a country that cares far more about rules and hierarchies than it does about individuals. The voice of the storyteller – dry and spare – prevents the story from becoming sentimental. It is nevertheless able to make real to us Granny Lin's tenderness towards her elderly husband, Old Tang, and subsequently the overwhelming affection she feels for the six-year-old unwanted boy, Kang.
Short stories have to establish their intention very fast, and stay on track, avoiding the kind of digressions and sub-plots that can enrich a novel. "Extra" bursts into life from the first sentence and holds the reader effortlessly. It also repays rereading.
There is a lot in this short piece about the way Chinese society is arranged. But by the time I'd read it three or four times – to prepare for my own reading aloud on the podcast – it had almost acquired the status of a parable about individual kindness versus the indifference of a power elite. And this, of course, is a subject of universal and timeless importance
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