At the meeting, the person he talked to was Liu Yi, an old acquaintance.

The girl entered the venue and listened for just a few minutes. Before she could get enough of it, the conversation between the two ended, which made her deeply regretful.

Next came the communication time between Lin Chaoyang and the readers. In the eyes of the girls, the situation was similar to the speech given at the Chinese University of Hong Kong a few days ago. The readers' communication and questions were frighteningly enthusiastic.

She raised her hand for a long time, but it was inconspicuous among the crowd of arms. She was never touched. The girl couldn't help but feel disappointed.

"Please ask the lady with long hair and the black coat."

The girl suddenly realized that the direction and characteristics Lin Chaoyang pointed at were exactly hers. She felt as if she had been hit by a trap falling from the sky, and stood up happily and excitedly.

"Hello Mr. Lin, I am Zhang Xiaoxian, a student of Hong Kong Baptist University. I would like to ask you a question. "Please tell me!" Lin Chaoyang on the stage politely extended his hand to Zhang Xiaoxian.

"I noticed that you have written works on many themes, both in content and style, but you have never written works on love themes.

I would like to ask, will you consider writing a love-themed work in the future?

If you could write, what kind of story would you like to write?”

After listening to Zhang Xiaoxian's question, Lin Chaoyang laughed.

The girl in front of me is none other than Zhang Xiaoxian, a romance novel writer who became famous across the Taiwan Strait and Taiwan. Given her character, it is reasonable to ask such a question.

Lin Chaoyang thought for a while and said: "As for whether I will create a love-themed work, I can't answer you for sure.

But I think I might not write a novel specifically to praise love."

Zhang Xiaoxian couldn't help but feel disappointed after hearing this, and asked: "Love is so beautiful, why can't we sing about it?"

"This world is beautiful, not only about love."

Lin Chaoyang replied. Since there were still many readers waiting to ask questions, he did not communicate more with Zhang Xiaoxian.

After the meeting ended, Lin Chaoyang was surrounded by readers asking for autographs. Zhang Xiaoxian stood outside the crowd and watched these people swarm forward, feeling envious in her heart.

I feel that being a pure literary writer is as good as Lin Chaoyang's.

But she thought about Lin Chaoyang's answer just now, and felt a little angry. What happened to love novels? Which one of Qiong Yao, Yi Shu, and Li Bihua didn't write love novels?

Feeling a little depressed, she didn't follow the crowd and ask for autographs. Thinking that she hadn't read the book she just bought, she found a random place in the library and read novels there.

Lin Chaoyang's new book is called "Father". When Zhang Xiaoxian saw this title, she instinctively thought it was about father's love.

After she turned a few pages, she couldn't help but frown.

The beginning of the novel tells the story of the daughter "An Xin" going to the home of her father, Lao An, who has memory problems. Because of her husband's job, she was transferred to Xiangjiang and could no longer take care of her father. Her father also drove away the caregiver Aunt Mei. She persuaded her father to accept her as a caregiver.

Arrangements for new nursing care.

But his father firmly believed that he could take care of himself and rejected "An Xin". The father and daughter had a quarrel and finally broke up.

Because the preset had been preset, this beginning did not bring any freshness to Zhang Xiaoxian.

She admitted that Lin Chaoyang's writing power was extraordinary. With just a few thousand words at the beginning, the stubborn and conceited character of the father had been completely established. The image of his daughter An Xin was a little dry, but her character traits were also very clear.

But this arrangement can hardly be called innovative, Zhang Xiaoxian commented in her heart.

However, at this moment, the story of the novel suddenly changed, and a stranger suddenly appeared in Lao An's home. He called himself Luo Jun, said that he was An Xin's husband, and that the house where Lao An lived belonged to him.

Facing Luo Jun's certainty, Lao An fell into confusion. He suspected that Luo Jun was a liar, but he also realized that he seemed to have missed some information.

He slowly sorted out his memory, but what he still remembered was that he had driven away nurse Xiaomei, and then An Xin was going to Xiangjiang, arranged a new nurse for him, and asked him to move to a nursing home.

After reading this, Zhang Xiaoxian was as confused as Lao An. This is nothing. Wasn't it fine just now? Why is the plot completely separated? What is going on with Luo Jun?

She thought she had missed some key information, so she read the first few pages of the novel again, and found that she had read it correctly, but the narrative of the novel suddenly fell into fragmentation.

It feels like the author suddenly fell into a schizophrenia.

You still look down on romance novels!

Zhang Xiaoxian complained in her heart and continued reading patiently. She had read many of Lin Chaoyang's novels and understood Lin Chaoyang's creative ability. She knew that he didn't even have the most basic storytelling ability.

Looking further, Luo Jun said he was going to get a cup of tea, but then he disappeared.

At this time, An Xin, who claimed to be "An Xin", appeared, but Lao An found that he did not recognize the An Xin in front of him at all, and Lao An fell into self-doubt.

The father and daughter chatted and talked about An Xin's husband who had just appeared and disappeared. An Xin said that his name was Liu Yanbing and that she was divorced five years ago.

Seeing this, Zhang Xiaoxian felt like her head was exploding.

She clearly understands every natural part of this paragraph, but why does she feel like she can't understand it when they are put together? What is the problem?

She couldn't help but feel a little irritated, and she really wanted to throw this old book aside.

But she thought that she had already bought the novel, so if she read a few more pages, maybe she would be able to give out some clues later on?

With this mentality, Zhang Xiaoxian continued to read.

Then, she became more and more confused. Although Lin Chaoyang kept throwing out clues in the narrative, as a reader, Zhang Xiaoxian was still unable to get a glimpse of the whole story.

We can only try to understand and summarize the whole story with a tentative touch, like a blind man feeling an elephant.

But until the library was about to close, she still hadn't completely figured out the plot of the novel.

She walked out of the Kowloon Library angrily. The more she thought about it, the angrier she became. After reading novels for so many years, she had never seen such a novel. It was simply fooling the readers into thinking they were fools.

After thinking about it again, she felt something was wrong.

If she can't understand the novel, isn't she worse than a fool?

She returned home with a sigh of relief, and continued to read the novel. She did not believe that she could not even understand a novel.

After two days of this, Zhang Xiaoxian also lay in bed for almost two days, during which she hardly stopped except for eating and going to the toilet.

At this moment, she was lying on the bed, with the novel opened next to the pillow. Tears were pouring out like a flood, and she tried her best to suppress her sobs.

She read it for two days and finally understood the story.

But at this moment, she didn't care about whether the novel made her look like a fool. She just wanted to cry wildly.

After crying for a long time, she finally felt a little relieved. She picked up the novel again and tried to sort out the story.

But when she saw what Lao An said in the book, "I feel like my leaves are about to fall off," her tears burst out again, completely uncontrollable.

This novel has so much staying power!

For half the night, Zhang Xiaoxian cried while watching, and the more she cried, the more she watched, until she finally fell asleep.

After she had a good sleep, she finally cleared away the sadness in her heart, but at this time, she had already accumulated thousands of words of praise in her heart, and she urgently needed to find an outlet.

Finally, Zhang Xiaoxian picked up the pen and wrote a line of text on the paper:

We will eventually be forgotten, including ourselves.

Affected by the upsurge of coverage of the Neustadt International Literary Award, Lin Chaoyang's "Father" was greatly welcomed by the readership when it was first launched in Hong Kong.

Various bookstores were crowded with enthusiastic readers who came to buy books. In just one week, the sales volume of the novel in Hong Kong exceeded 50,000 copies.

This situation not only happens in Xiangjiang, but also in the mainland and Bay Islands.

This time "Father" was released simultaneously in three places on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and advertisements in many literary publications in various places were placed a month in advance, which can be described as a huge momentum.

It takes one week to go on sale in mainland China.

The sales volume of "Father" exceeded 280,000 copies, which is one of the few achievements among Lin Chaoyang's works.

In Bay Island, it also achieved sales of 23,000 copies per week.

However, along with the novel's booming sales momentum, many readers have reported that the content of the novel is very obscure, the story structure is like a maze, and the narrative has no smoothness at all.

Among Lin Chaoyang's millions of readers, there are many senior literature lovers with rich reading experience. However, even these patient and aesthetic readers were frightened by the difficulty of reading "Father".

.

There are not many readers like Zhang Xiaoxian who can persist in reading it for the first time.

The first wave of reader feedback for "Father" scared away many potential readers who were ready to take action. These people were not Lin Chaoyang's most loyal readers. They would buy a copy if the work had a good reputation, and vice versa.

The sudden drop in readers' reputation caused the originally good sales of "Father" to take a turn for the worse. The novel's sales in the mainland in the second week were only 110,000 copies, and sales in Xiangjiang and Wandao also fell sharply.

This situation was something that several publishing houses on both sides of the Taiwan Strait had never imagined. They are the publishers of "Father" and are very confident in the story and quality of the novel.

It is generally believed that the narrative and structure of "The Father" are indeed not friendly enough for ordinary readers.

To even understand this story, you may need a little bit of IQ.

But overall, this novel is still a masterpiece full of artistic charm.

After the novel was released, sales started high but then declined, and the early reputation did not meet expectations, which is extremely rare among Lin Chaoyang's novels.

In the past, works such as "The Master of Chess" and "The Great Era" had a poor reputation in the early stage, but Haoluo's sales performance was able to withstand it.

The beginning of "Father" this time feels a bit like Waterloo.

Fortunately, this situation did not last long.

In the last week of the novel's first month on the market, as more and more readers "gnawed" down "The Father", the novel's reputation among readers also experienced a reversal.

At the same time, many literary publications and newspapers on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and three places also released their evaluations of the novel.

Among the many comments from media publications in various places, the article in Ming Pao was the first to be published. In the second week after the novel was released, Ming Pao published an article titled "We will eventually be forgotten."

This article can hardly be regarded as a book review, because there is no rational logical analysis throughout it, and it is all about the author's subjective reading experience of the novel.
Chapter completed!