格非《人面桃花》

[Fred0]

Ah, that's a big help. I was not reading it that way at all. Thanks.

[陳德聰]

A tip: when you see [...的noun], you will need to try to trace back to see how far the attributive clause extends. In this case, you found out it goes all the way to the beginning and ends up as [最后一个来到家中的]. If the 最後 had been meant as a time phrase, the author would have probably had to use a comma to disambiguate the phrasing: 最後，[ 一個來到家中的 ] 客人

[Fred0]

Thank you, that's a good tip.

 

[Fred0]

15 year-old Xiumi has been gossiping in the kitchen with Cuiliang, a servant, who is doing the dinner dishes. They have been talking about various things including her insane father who has run away and is now missing. Cuiliang is saying that it's very strange that a charming, male, distant cousin of the mother has shown up at the house just as the father has (conveniently) disappeared. Xiumi suddenly becomes morose and silent: 秀米听她这样说，忽然沉默不语，一个人闷闷地想她的心思。

 

This last clause is puzzling to me grammatically. The verb seems to be xiang, so the sentence seems to be saying that a person is sadly missing her mood.  Please help.

[陳德聰]

想 also means “think” so in effect, “think her thoughts”

[Guest realmayo]

An English translation of this novel was published last month: https://www.nyrb.com/products/peach-blossom-paradise?variant=32754445058185

[urionje]

I'm glad to see the translation was published, but I had such a good time going through these posts and trying my hand at parsing the posted sentences before they were commented on by others. Loved this whole discussion and it has very much inspired me to jump into a short story myself!