camarote do fantasma

The Empty Ship (空船, pinyin: kong chuan) was in many ways a refreshing change from my standard menu of baihe reading. It's set in a small town, and features determinedly unglamorous main characters. The main interest in the novel is seeing the main characters' journey towards (some degree of) self-realisation and towards a romantic relationship with each other, which for the most part it accomplishes quite gradually, unobtrusively and naturally.

Our protagonist is Jiang Xiaohui, a pre-school teacher's assistant (on account of not having the qualifications needed to be an actual pre-school teacher, nor the ambition to acquire them). A retiring, socially awkward woman who keeps the world at arm's length, her life has been overshadowed by two major tragedies. The first is the sudden death of her parents and her consequent loss of her (Christian) faith, leading to her leaving the close-knit religious community she'd grown up in (I found this fairly detailed, overt depiction of religious life interesting, because I don't see it that often in webnovels). The second is that, seven years ago, she witnessed the brutal murder of one of her students in her own classroom. At the start of the novel, she's sort of marking time, quietly drifting through life in a semi-dissociative state. Things change when she discovers that a strange and rather alarming woman is stalking her in a rather determined fashion.

( some very vague spoilers, one very-early-book reveal )

I read the Chinese original of The Empty Ship here on JJWXC. Unfortunately the author has stopped writing due to what sounds like fairly horrific online harassment (I suspect from the radfems who make up a disproportionately vocal portion of the baihe readership. They probably objected to the main characters having had prior romantic and sexual relationships with men).