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BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS

碎夢大道

Author Wolf Hsu
Translator Darryl Sterk

Our hero is nameless, a mystery to himself as much as us. Directionless, he takes a job as a bouncer, but soon finds himself given a very different task by the boss; to find the missing dancer Bo. It sounds like an easy enough job, but soon proves to be a more difficult than expected. Who is Bo? No one knows anything about her, where she lives, what she does when she’s not at work, or even who she spends her time with, family, friends. Why has she gone to all this trouble to remain a mystery?

Just as he starts to unlock keys to Bo’s past and where she might be, he finds himself in a rundown part of town, where the locals are protesting against a plan by the city government to ‘renew’ the area. What he finds is a story sadder and more moving than he could have imagined.

Marianne Faithfull sang about THE BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS and Wolf Hsu’s novel is written in the same melancholy key, a loving homage to the hard-boiled detective tradition. Narrated in the first person in a clear, cold prose, this is not just a story of a missing person, but the absurdity of reality and the hidden undercurrents that sit beneath our seemingly indifferent surfaces. Full of quirky details, Wolf Hsu reminds us; made up stories are often truer than real life.

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