Bambi Dear Deer [Novel Set] (Author's Hand-Drawn Poster × Original Illustration Card)

A gaze is an invisible touch. -- Author Li Ya-feng Bambi's world exists within a tearoom, a mingling of perfume, tobacco, and men's laughter. Here, she observes how the women navigate their existence with precise smiles. Her adolescence arrives subtly, marked by the crimson of her first period and a secretly purchased pink lace undergarment, signifying her hesitant step across the threshold into womanhood. She learns early the complex scents of survival, where reality and illusion intertwine in the adult world. Adolescent encounters are a constant exploration of boundaries. From the semi-coerced demands of an older student in a school storage room, she experiences the oppressive weight of power and desire for the first time. Later, she meets the free-spirited girl Bonnie, whose life philosophy—"like it or have money"—becomes her guide to freedom and resistance. As an adult, her life seems compartmentalized into different display windows. By day, she hides within a bulky, stifling deer mascot costume, playing the role of a gentle prey for photo opportunities in an amusement park. By night, she transforms into an erotic livestreamer, selling desires under the stark white light. She attempts to find stability through marriage, only to discover she cannot escape her husband's indifference, the intrusive scrutiny of elders, and the fate of the women around her, who wither amidst love and violence. Yet, as tragedies repeat themselves, Bambi, with nowhere left to retreat, refuses to be a sacrificial deer any longer. She sheds the soft fur that invited touch and breaks off the antlers symbolizing power. To the urgent beat of flamenco drums and in a pool of blood, she dances a furious, silent symphony, completing a bloody yet beautiful self-redemption. 【Book Highlights】 ◆ Explores the desire embedded in "gaze" during the growth process and the unspoken relationships behind it. Starting from delicate, nuanced bodily memories, it restores the cruelest yet purest truth of female growth. ◆ Blends cinematic aesthetics with literary narrative, like a flowing long take, immersing the reader in the scenes. ◆ Weaves between realistic daily life and fantastical allegory, transforming suppression into extreme visual violence through a flamenco dance in a pool of blood. 【Acclaimed Reviews】 ◆ Esther Liu (Actress) For women, the shackles of being destined to be hunted are subtly present in the subconscious. Perhaps it’s not about gender at all; we all exist between hunter and prey, defining ourselves within these intersecting consciousnesses. ◆ Hsieh Chih-chiao (Writer) Perhaps we expect such a story to have a happy ending, but it doesn't offer one readily. It provides no cheap redemption, no academic lectures, or comforting answers. Instead, through a bloody and painful fragmentation, it tells the reader: stripped of external guise and internal scars, only then can she stand in this world. ◆ Kuo Jo-chi (Producer) Bambi grew up in the light; her pain and allure are both tied to "being watched." This isn't a performance technique but a survival skill born of necessity. Her every smile, every posture, even her silence, is a response to the lens. This is the language I know best on set: where the light falls, someone lives; when the camera moves away, someone disappears. ◆ Lizard (Film Critic) Bambi, a "pre-cinematic novel," sees the male director taking an unconventional approach to telling a female story. He narrates a coming-of-age allegory between reality and surrealism: how a girl, gazed upon since childhood, confronts sex, explores it, and attempts to control its inherent power, ultimately erupting in a violently symbolic act of revenge. ◆ Gloca San (Film Critic) I appreciate the interplay of reality and illusion in Bambi. Each chapter is visually rich, with a rhythm in its forelegs like dance, and antlers like weapons of resistance. Though I couldn't witness these scenes on screen, the text allows me to deeply connect with Bambi's state of being. ◆ Lee Yuan-chieh (Screenwriter) Bambi is like a slow evolution. From the scent of perfume in the tearoom to the dance steps in a pool of blood, the girl's growth is stretched into a long, drawn-out wound. The author employs classical feminine narration to depict a body hidden within a mascot suit—a body that gradually loses its human form yet dances with increasing clarity. Ultimately, the costume ceases to be a concealing shell and becomes a ritual of judgment. From the gentle resistance against capitalist society in "Son of the Great Doll" to the primal revenge against the system of gazes in "Bambi," the doll is no longer a manipulated character but a deity wielding antlers. This is an allegory of how a body learns to fight back.