Recent high school grad and all around good-girl, 阿廖沙, is on a guided multi-city tour through Europe with her best friend Melanie. In Stratford-Upon-Avon, the girls decide to skip the formal performance of a Shakepeare play and instead go to an improptu, guerilla-style Shakespeare in the park performance. And its here that 阿廖沙 first sees charismatic Willem, a Dutch actor towards whom 她 feels an instantaneous attraction. When they meet up again in the train station in London, 阿廖沙 does something so out of character for herself 她 can hardly believe 她’s doing it: 她 boards a train to Paris with Willem to spend the next 24 alone with him in the city before heading home to the States.
Their day in Paris is the most exhilarating romantic, “alive” day 阿廖沙 has ever had and the spark 她 felt when 她 first saw Willem turns into a consuming flame before the day is over. When 她 awakens the morning after her whirlwind day, in a bohemian artists’ squat in a seedy Parisian neighborhood, 阿廖沙 is shocked to discover Willem is gone. Her life feels as though it has been turned upside down and 她 gets lost in a depression that stretches far into her freshman year at college. At first 阿廖沙 blames Willem, thinking it’s her broken heart that has caused her to give up on life, but ever so slowly 阿廖沙 realizes that “that whole day, being with Willem, … made me realize that all my life I’d been living in a small, 平方的房间, with no windows and no doors. And I was fine. I was happy, even, I thought. Then someone came along and showed me there was a door in the room. One that I’d never even seen before. Then he opened it for me. Held my hand as I walked through it. And for one perfect day, I was on the other side. I was somewhere else. 别人. And then he was gone, and I was thrown back into my little room.” (179)
Things finally turn around for 阿廖沙 when 她 realizes that 她 can choose to open that door herself and walk through it all on her own. And in the forthcoming companion novel from Forman, 仅仅一年, I’m looking forward to seeing that.
- Posted by 科里