The Sense of Floating and Finding Moorings in Xiaolu Guo’s A Lover’s Discourse

Abstract

This article analyses Xiaolu Guo’s 2020 novel A Lover’s Discourse. It follows the novel’s unnamed protagonist, a young Chinese woman who moves to London, traces her journey through the concept of mooring. The article examines this notion of mooring through the intimate connections that the protagonist makes with the place that she lives in and through her relationship with her partner. Using the concept of moorings as a theoretical background, the article discusses what moorings mean for the protagonist. It focuses on the theme of floating and the idea of home to outline a pursuit of finding mooring that rests in the protagonist’s desire to belong in the world. Moorings, this article argues, are affective and represent an individual’s desire to belong. This desire is affected by the individual’s experiences in life, influencing their state of being and ways of living. For the unnamed protagonist, the expectation of mooring is rooted in the possibilities of the future where her sense of living is not lost and is retained along with her sense of being together with her companion.