The Boy with Blue Eyes is a 2020 novella by Travis Lee. Set in Wuhan, China, the story centers around a half-American, half-Chinese boy who looks fully Chinese minus a pair of deep blue eyes. After his alcoholic father suffers a stroke, the boy heads out into the city to find his mother, has an encounter with the police, and is rescued by a local man...who also has a pair of deep blue eyes.
The Boy with Blue Eyes provides examples of:
- Arc Words: "The people sea"
- Affably Evil: The blue-eyed man is kind to the boy and arguably more of a father figure than his real father. The blue-eyed man gives him a place to stay, cooks for him, bathes him and is also kind to the girl and the other boys in the gang he leads. He also has no issue ordering someone's murder and slitting a driver's throat near the end of the book.
- Bilingual Bonus: Certain words in Mandarin aren't translated into English. Some of their meanings can be inferred from context, such as referring to Chinese characters as hanzi.
- Gainax Ending: The ending is open to interpretation.
- The boy is at least dehydrated, and hasn't slept for days.
- The foreigners who rescue him, in contrast to the ones he meets earlier, speak perfect Mandarin.
- The sky, which up to this point has been described as oppressively smoggy, is suddenly blue.
- And not to mention the recurring vision/dream of the soundless rider chasing him beneath a Mid-Autumn Festival moon.
- No Name Given: The boy, the blue-eyed man, the official...we never find out anyone's name, except Boss Chen, the crooked accountant who gets beaten to death.
- No Punctuation Period: Used sporadically throughout the book at times when the boy is lost, malnourished, scared, etc. Portrays the passage of time and gaps in his memory.
- Perfectly Cromulent Word: A migrant worker's hands are described as "mankled".
- Red Right Hand: The blue eyes possessed by both the boy and the blue-eyed man. While not impossible for a Chinese person to have blue eyes, it's unusual enough to make both the boy and the man stand out.
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Spiritual Successor: Has a similar style to The Journey through Nanking which also abandons a typical writing style and features a child as its main character.
