The family is a refuge or a hell. Fang Fang addresses many realities in this short novel: the family, as the cornerstone of Chinese society; widowhood, as a rupture of the natural order of things; the social image, as an immovable slab that forces us to maintain an undaunted mask in good manners; and life and death, the two sides of every coin. Wounded, resentful of the treatment she receives from her children and grandchildren, the grandmother takes poison. This woman, a symbol of generational bridge and the nucleus of a matriarchal family due to the death of her husband, refuses to die, so she submerges in a comatose dreaming mode, of inadvertent capture. From her position of no-life-no-death, this mother, grandmother, widow and referent of her neighborhood will be aware of the misfortune that accompanies her as an unwanted old woman already, to see how the sacrifices made in favor of her numerous family for so many years, not only have they not generated gratitude, but they have opted for the repulsion that leads even to murder.
