millennial_dandy's reviews
342 reviews

First off, props where props are due: 'Love in the Big City' is a Booker International long-list selection, so congrats to author Sang Young Park for absolutely killing it in the first of his translated works (and thanks also to his translator, Anton Hur, for bringing it to an English-speaking audience).

I always like to start out my musings over a book by considering who it's for. In some rather obvious ways, 'Love in the Big City' is for the author himself. Our protagonist and he share a name, so I think it's safe to assume that this is either semi-autobiographical or a very convincing alternate reality.

But aside from that, this is a novel that likely owes much of its popularity to the fact that Park nailed the feeling of aging Millennial ennui. And as an aging Millennial full of ennui, I could definitely relate.

All the hallmarks of 'Millennialness' were there: the sarcasm, the self-depricating humor covering deep chasms of insecurities and anxiety, the affectation of carelessness, having a job you at best feel indifferent about just to keep on top of the bills, the realization that you're actually just average and the window of opportunity to attempt to be extraordinary is shrinking fast. The horror of inheriting a world your grandparents' generation screwed up and your parents' generation gentrified, so now you're in your 30s still dependent on a roommate to cover the rent and going on the ocassional budget vacation all with climate change hanging over your head to the point that you're just like 'screw it; I'm going to drown my sorrows with [insert coping mechanism here.]'

Sigh.

Even the title leans into this quintessentially Millennial sardonic-ness.

In other words, there's a lot of apathy bordering on and sometimes veering into depression.

And that's not even touching on the plot yet; that's just the vibe.

The plot is comprised of 4 vignettes, each allowing our protagonist to mull over different important relationships from his 20s, some familial, some platonic, many romantic.

And they're all wonderful and sad and nostalgic and so very much a portrait of all that is, if I may, fucked up about our generation.

Getting away from the Millennial navel-gazing, 'Love in the Big City' is also a stunning portrait of queer life in Seoul in the late 2000s (ish -- it's never exactly specified, so I'm guessing a little bit here). Park has a real talent for picking out tactile details that really ground the setting without disrupting the voice.

It's also nice to see such a high profile hit with a protagonist who's allowed to not be conventionally attractive without that being his defining character trait. He references steadily gaining weight as he gets older, but this is never treated as an important plot-point, and feels naturally integrated into the story. It's also interesting that much of the focus, especially of the first chapters, is on how many hook-ups he has throughout his 20s. These two pieces of information in tandem present a healthy relationship between body type and attractiveness. He isn't having a lot of sex either because of or despite his weight. The implication, of course, is that in the real world, despite what tv and film would have you believe, you don't need to be a 10/10 or limit yourself to being fetishized to get laid.

A big sigh of relief for the vast majority of us without washboard abs and flawless, dewy skin.

Do I think anyone outside of the target audience would really 'get' this? I'm honestly too close to it to say for sure. I suppose anyone older might roll their eyes at the tone and wonder to themselves why 'all the kids these days with no real problems feel the need to develop mental illnesses and be gay' while the Zoomers would likely roll their eyes in a very 'oh my god, grandpa, must you be such an Eeyore' kind of way.

Just a feeling I have.

But in any case, I had a good (?) time in 'the Big City'. I felt seen. I felt understood. I felt empathy.

I hope that after this was published Park hunkered down with a pint of frozen blueberries and watched 90s cartoons. I know I will be after reading it.

4.5/5

What a fabulous book to end Pride month on (albeit a wee bit late)!

'Memoirs of a Man's Maiden Years' is one of those delightfully complicated texts that can be examined through many lenses.

A very literal reading gives us the memoirs of an intersex person who was raised female and then as a young adult transitioned both socially and medically to male in the early 20th century in Germany. He describes his confusion and discomfort as a child and his eventual relief at later being properly re-classified as a man. As a part of queer, and specifically, trans history, the importance of this text cannot be understated. Though the writer, N.O. Body (revealed in the introduction to have been Karl M. Baer) would likely even now not identify as transgender, but rather, as an intersex man, there is tremendous overlap. The fact that he underwent gender affirming surgery in the 1910s is both shocking and validating of the narrative that trans (or at least non-cisgender) people have always existed, and that the determination of sex, even physiologically, is imperfect. And if even determining biological sex is that imperfect, well then, imagine trying to prescribe something as slippery as gender!

The Preface, provided by Sander L. Gilman, and the Afterward, provided by Hermann Simon, are bookends to the memoirs themselves that attempt to fill in the gaps the author leaves in his own narrative, and provide historical context of contemporary discussions of hermaphroditism (now generally referred to as 'intersex') and Jewish identity respectively.

Both the preface and the afterward are incredibly academic, and clearly not meant for casual reading. They are interesting and do add nuance, but the core component, really, is the memoir itself. Lucky us: N.O.Body just so happened to have been a good writer in addition to simply having lived a life of inherent interest.

Though not, as stated above, a perfect 1-1, so much of N.O. Body's depiction of their childhood experiences would absolutely resonate with trans readers. There are several truly heartbreaking passages in which the author searches for representation of someone else like him, and attempts to create an identity for himself and understand why he is seen as so different from his peers.

"My favorite subject was natural history. I found anthropology most fascinating. I had now realized I could not understand the secret that was wrapped around my strangeness by brooding over theories. Thus I waited with bated breath in natural history lessons for a word that might have guided me onto the right path." (47)

Eventually, he finds a narrative that reminds him of himself when reading the story of Achilles, whose mother dresses him as a girl to protect him at one point in his myth. "With feverish excitement, I read the legend to the end. I rejoiced. I was saved!" (32)

Later, though, this identification he felt with Achilles's story sours as he begins to go through a puberty he (being raised as a girl) was completely unprepared for and horrified by:

"By coincidence, I read in a book that consumptives are hoarse. Now I knew what was wrong with me, and in my lively imagination I thought I felt all the symptoms mentioned in the book. [...] Religious instruction made an especially strong impression on me. [...] God was not a loving, but rather an angry father. I understood this well. [...] I, a poor lonely child, had been chosen to take all of the suffering of the world upon myself." (41, 43)

Convinced that he's dying of consumption (since neither of his parents will tell him the truth about his body), as a tween, he becomes convinced that his death is imminent:

"In this lonely sorrow, my thoughts of death became ever stronger and more certain, and when I lay in my bed, I cried for a long while, full of scalding self-pity [...] I forgave my parents the injustice of raising the boy I felt myself to be as a girl. I forgave my little tormentors at school all their brutality and the teasing with which they had so often tortured me." (42)

As alluded to here, as a child and later as a teenager, he is teased and ostracized by first the girls around him, who mock him for looking like a boy, and then the boys, who won't be seen hanging out with a girl.

Again, though in N.O.Body's case his sex and gender identity do ultimately align, these are experiences that many trans people have before and during puberty; the cruelness of children (likely picked up from their parents) a sadly common thread. It is also a very strong anecdotal case to suggest that gender identity is an innate thing, and a person being pushed into the gender roles associated with one sex over the other causes cognitive dissonance and anxiety, much of which could be avoided if gender identity is allowed to be explored and openly lauded as a valid option.

Being cisgender or being straight may account for the vast majority of people, but that oughtn't make it the default or the 'normal' against which everything else is measured. This has been demonstrated over and over again in numerous studies that all point to the breakdown of rigid, arbitrary gender roles and representation in media of diverse peoples being the antidote to the angst felt by people like N.O.Body and countless other people who have fallen outside the cisgender, heteronormative box.

This is important to discuss now more than ever in a time where alt-right fascism is on the rise in countries previously viewed as socially progressive. We must remember that legislation such as Florida's 'Don't Say Gay' bill don't prevent the 'indoctrination' of children into the 'gay agenda' as they claim, but rather, create thousands of people just like the depressed, lonely kid in Germany at the turn of the century who thought he was cursed by God to die of consumption.
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a lovely quote

The leafy tree protected us from the sun and at the same time from unwanted eyes during our games [...] That tree no longer stands there. When I visited my hometown a short while ago in order to see the sites of my childhood once again, I searched for the elder tree. But it had been chopped down when its dead branches no longer provided any shade [...]

This seemed to be an allegory about life: one goes forth to search for the blooming bushes of childhood and finds autumnal creeper growing rampant where one left behind blooming roses. Fortunate is he who is able to take delight in the blaze of color of the leaves when he has overcome his disappointment. However, many set forth in search of roses and forget that winter has set in. It is those people whose souls bleed when they search for their childhood. The wind has caused the rose to shed its petals, and those people grasp at thorns. (16,17)

This was my first taste of Caribbean literature, and George Lamming didn't disappoint. 'In the Castle of My Skin,' written when the author was just 23 years old, is a gorgeous novel that does what all great works do: captures human truth. And in this case, Lamming captured the soul of mid-century Barbados as well.

I imagine it would be nearly impossible for writers from countries subjugated to colonialism not to have that impact their work given how entwined with the development of the culture of the colonized a legacy of colonialism is (just one of the many tragedies of such a history). And though that legacy exists, initially, on the fringes of the narrative, as the protagonist grows up and his sense of awareness broadens, so too does this legacy become more of a prominent root of the antagonism that seems will inevitably shred the identity of the village where 'In the Castle of My Skin' is set.

This becomes incredibly obvious in the very last pages of the novel when the protagonist reconnects with a friend recently returned from a stint in America on the eve of his own departure from the island.

In a brilliant speech, his friend, Trumper, describes that though he had mixed feelings about his time in America, he gained an understanding of race there that illuminated not only a solid identity for him to internalize, but also of just how successful the British (whom he calls "the great administrators") were at building a system of oppression in a way the Americans had failed to do. He uses the example of how each nation performs exclusion. In Barbados, he explains, the British put up signs on certain buildings that say 'members only'.

There be clubs which you an' me can't go to, an' none of my people here, no matter who they be, but they don't tell us we can't. [...] An' although we know from the start why we can't go, we got the consolation we can't 'cause we ain't members. In America they don't worry with that kind o' beatin' bout the bush. (p.296)

In Barbados, he goes on, this method serves to pit the villagers against each other as they scrabble for small crumbs of power and status so that they then don't focus on the white families living true lives of decadent privilege on the hill. All of the people with whom they come into direct power struggles are other Black folks: Mr. Slime (who swindles the villagers in order to use their money to buy up land for himself) and the overseer (who enforces the white landlord's ownership of the village properties). Thus, the myth that they can one day be 'members' continues to propagate.

But in America, Trumper explains, the more blatant 'us' vs. 'them', divided along racial lines, had the unintended side effect (one still felt to this day) of creating solidarity among Black Americans.

'Sometimes here the whites talk 'bout the Negro people. It ain't so in the States [...] There they simply say the Negroes,' said Trumper [...] There ain't no "man" and there ain't no "people." [...] It make a tremendous difference not to the whites but the blacks. [...] That's how we learn the race. 'Tis what a word can do. Now there ain't a black man in all America who won't get up an' say I'm a Negro and proud of it. We all are proud of it. I'm going to fight for the rights o' the Negroes, and I'll die fighting. That's what any black man in the States will say. He ain't got no time to think 'bout the rights o' Man or People or whatever you choose to call it. It's the rights o' the Negro, 'cause we have gone on usin' the word the others use for us, an' now we are a different kind o' creature. [...] You'll hear 'bout the Englishman, an' the Frenchman [...] An' each is call that 'cause he born in that particular place. But you'll become a Negro like me an' all the rest in the States an' all over the world, 'cause it ain't have nothin' to do with where you born." (p.297)

This is hands down the best, most succinct explanation of the paradoxical reality and artifice of race I've ever read in fiction or otherwise. It's something I'd imagine most people of color, especially Black people, are acutely aware of just through life experience, but something I think that white people have a really hard time understanding much less acknowledging.

This is the reason that Black culture is a real thing, created out of something artificial, and 'white culture' isn't a real thing, and it's why I think a lot of people find the 'colorblind' approach to racial justice...annoying (?) to say the least.

Though this pointed exploration of race and power dynamics is what makes up the strong backbone of arguably the entire novel, much of the emotional core comes from how much of a love letter from Lamming to Barbados this is.

His descriptions of the island and its nature and his portraits of the villagers are rendered in loving detail, from the scenes of the kids chasing crabs down by the beach, to them just walking through the village and encountering its people, an extended description of the narrator's mother cooking his final meal before he leaves for Trinidad. It's all just absolutely lovely.

Because of this heavy use of vignette, the 'plot' as such doesn't follow traditional pacing, which, if you go in expecting that will make it feel like things are just dragging along without anything much actually happening until the last third, but if you're willing to meander and just sort of exist from scene to scene, I think it's an incredibly rewarding reading experience.

Highly, highly recommend.

'Jonny Appleseed' is a fabulous example of just how much the intersectionality of identity drives our lives, and how the push and pull between them can sometimes be incredibly painful.

"Funny how an NDN "love you" sounds more like, "I'm in pain with you." (88) This is a novel dripping in the melancholy of that pain.

Our narrator, Jonny, has an incredibly strong voice, brimming with quintessentially Millennial sardonicness to cover some pretty deep wounds. Despite his closeness with his grandmother (Kokum) and his mother, his unapoligetic queerness alienates him from most of the men on the 'rez' and as a young adult he flees to the nearby city of Winnipeg where he gets involved in sex work to make ends meet.

In Winnipeg we follow the tragic love triangle betweem him, his childhood friend, Tias, and Tias's girlfriend as they all try to find their way despite the microaggressions and overt racism they experience.

For a debut novel, some of the thematic background work in 'Jonny Appleseed' is incredibly subtle. The term 'generational trauma' never comes up explicitly, and yet its specter haunts every one of our main characters in ways they ultimately can't seem to escape.

As a child, Jonny's Kokum rejoices at his light skin and against his mother's wishes, allows him to get a haircut like Tom Cruise. But despite this attitude, she is also the one who raises Jonny on the stories of their tribe and through whom he is imbued with a sense of connection to their culture.

And boy is author Joshua Whitehead not shy about illustrating just how much colonialism shredded that cultural sense of self, and still does.

This is a beautifully written story, and though there are moments where the poetic style verges on purple prose, much of it is so gorgeous that you can forgive it that.

There is a meandering, dreamy quality to the chronology and reveal of information that won't be for everyone, but given how short the novel is, I didn't find it difficult to nevertheless follow the main narrative thread, and indeed, because this style was incredibly consistant I found myself sliding into an almost fuge state just reading it.

A very talented, fresh voice in queer literature. I'll happily read whatever he comes out with next.

3.5

Again, I find myself in the difficult position of trying to parse through the etiquette of rating a short story collection. I'm also walking on eggshells here because I know Simone de Beauvoir is so beloved outside of just the fiction she wrote, but that's not within my purview to get into, and plus, death of the author and all that.

Unlike some of the other short story collections I've rated, this one feels more cohesive and thoughtfully put-together. None of the three stories feels superfluous or tacked on. That being said, I didn't find the overall experience to be greater than the sum of its parts. And, frankly, some of it is simply down to my personal preferences when it comes to writing style.

The first story in the collection, Age of Discretion (a 5/5 for me), was the one I enjoyed most. It felt tight, it addressed some pretty hefty anxieties around aging, specifically. It also had the honor of not being depressing.

"The sight of the changing world is miraculous and heartbreaking, both at the same time.”

This summaries beautifully the thesis de Beauvoir seems to be driving at in the story. Our protagonist and her husband are both in or entering 'old age.' Initially, our protagonist is quite content. She's a professor working on yet another in a string of successful publications on literary criticism and at ease with the idea that much of her life in front of her will involve looking fondly backwards at the journey behind her.

Her husband, on the other hand, struggles with aging, even going so far as to assert that the first part of a scientist's career is about pushing the field forward, and the latter half of his career is him holding it back.

Our protagonist too is ultimately dragged into his feelings of worthlessness when her newest book, which she was so certain was groundbreaking, is panned as a simple rehash of ideas she's published before. Suddenly it is revealed that her lack of aging anxiety hinged on the notion that she was still, in some manner, 'useful' or 'productive.' Without that security blanket, she felt much the same as her husband, bitterly saying:

You are so young!” she added.
People often tell me that, and I feel flattered. All at once the remark irritated me. It is an equivocal compliment and one that foretells a disagreeable future. Remaining young means retaining lively energy, cheerfulness and vitality of mind. So the fate of old age is the dull
daily round, gloom and dotage. I am not young: I am well preserved, which is quite different. Well preserved; and maybe finished and done with.

This, along with a general lack of clear communication with her husband and a rift with her son, leads her to fall into a spiraling depression she is only able to pull herself out of by directly facing what she perceives to be her failures.

She and her husband actually talk about her feelings of them growing apart, and she discovers that this was purely a miscommunication between them. He reveals as well his plans to take several physics courses to bring himself up-to-date even though he plans to retire. "Just to know it," he says. And he encourages her to pursue other intellectual interests, to expand her own knowledge base and find something new to be excited about.

In short, my takeaway, as a person in their late 20s, was that while aging may be characterized as de Beauvoir initially does, by saying: "sluggishness of the heart is called indulgence and wisdom: in fact it is death settling down within you." But it doesn't have to be this way; youth may lend itself to intellectual curiosity and flexibility, and perhaps, to some degree, to innovation, but as her husband points out, age only holds those things back to the degree that a person is unwilling to work out the muscles. If this weren't true, my 80 year-old grandfather wouldn't have been able to develop proficiency in smartphone technology.

Similarly, it prompted me, as an 'aging' young person, to push back against my own crochety attitude towards things like TikTok. I can go down that road, but de Beauvoir warns us that that kind of ageist superiority ultimately just bites us in the ass.

The second story, 'The Monologue,' I have admittedly less to say anything about. That kind of stream of consciousness writing is simply not something I enjoy reading even though I can fully appreciate that it can be done with purpose and good craftmanship. A reviewer for The Science Survey

summarized 'The Monologue' incredibly well, saying: 'The Monologue is, amongst a plethora of other, more sophisticated descriptive phrases, exhausting. [...] De Beauvoir did this by design. [...] She knows how agonizing it must be to endure the seemingly endless soliloquy [...] She claims space for herself, knowing that she deserves it."

This is all fine and true, and having read it I can see the feminist argument to be made for its existence, but I just don't like reading stream of consciousness, so I was never going to like this any more than I liked that aspect of Faulkner's 'The Sound and the Fury.'

The third and titular story, 'The Woman Destroyed' was, in a word, depressing, in almost every aspect. Written as an epistolary diary of our protagonist, this, more than even 'The Monologue,' was a slog. Getting through this story was exhausting. Not that it was dense in style or form; each diary entry was a pretty easy bite, but the sheer weight and repetitiveness of her anxiety that quickly slides into the realm of pure neuroticism, is painful.

This also felt the most like a feminist text. Not feminist in the academic sense, but more in the sense that this touches on something of the horror of womanhood within a patriarchal system, particularly a system in which that pressure is invisible. There are no laws that actively relegate women to second-class citizens, but there are nonetheless certain social expectations baked into the ways in which such a society socializes girls to behave and think.

Our protagonist discovers her husband is having an affair.

That's it. That's the thing that ruins her life.

She agonizes over what fault in her led to him stepping out. Had she failed to keep up her physical appearance? Had she been a bad mother? Should she have had a career, but oh, would having had a career made her a worse wife and mother? Should she stand her ground and tell him to end the affair, or would that be too aggressive and push him away? Did her not standing her ground push him away?

It's a wild roller-coaster.

For a person who wasn't socialized as a girl I reckon it'd be pretty inciteful to read something like this, but for anyone who was socialized as a girl I just can't imagine that this would be a satisfying experience or even particularly cathartic.

4.5 rounded down to 4

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is such a tricky book to comment on because not only is it genre-bending in the sense that there's this pervasive magical-realism to it, but also in the sense that it's one part novel, one part treatise on the reader-author relationship. Like a dialogue a la Plato, 'If on a Winter's Night' employs fiction as a vehicle for its own philosophical musings.

And those musings are incredibly interesting. Is death of the author possible? In what ways is the reading experience a collaboration between reader and author? In arguably the wackiest in a series of wacky chapters, he explores the needle-threading fascist regimes need to do when it comes to censorship so that they have something to unite the citizenry in despising.

Much of the first chapter is comprised of a list of the different types of books we buy at bookshops.

These sections are Calvino at his best, I'd argue.

As is often the case in framed narratives, the framing device is the least interesting and least developed, and this did get a tad tedious in the moments that Calvino slowed it down instead of just allowing the framing device to exist as the mechanism by which to develop the clever idea that holds the novel together: 'what if you start a book, it cuts off just as it's getting interesting, you think you find the complete thing only to discover it's not the same book, but another, equally interesting novel that also cuts off just as it's getting interesting. Rinse, repeat ten times.

This is an interesting idea on paper, but has to be pulled off by a writer with chops. Luckily, Calvino does indeed have the chops to pull it off and every story fragment is as engrossing as the last. And the twist (of sorts) at the end that reveals how they're all connected is earned and very clever. One of those things that a truly astute reader could pick up on, and the average reader could have wash over them, though both would walk away satisfied.

There are so many threads to this book for it being so relatively short, and if you pull on one it invariably pulls on another because Calvino is just so darned good at knitting that even criticizing the framing device feels hollow when it's clear what greater purpose it serves.

It's one of those books that, having read it, makes me more understanding of those people who obsess over trying to interpret books like 'Ulysses' or 'Gravity's Rainbow.' I can't speak to the specifics of those books, but I imagine that their authors were also pretty big lovers of reading and language -- as Calvino must also have been, given how much fun he obviously had putting this book together.

If you're a writer, this is a book for you to read and feel seen, and learn about the craft. If you're a reader, this is a book for you to read and feel seen, and dig into for all the little easter eggs.

This book made me want to write and it made me want to read, so thank you, Mr. Calvino: mission accomplished.

But, in the spirit of 'Reading Rainbow', you don't have to take my word for it.

I leave you with a few quotes. If any of them resonate with you, then 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller' is your book:

"How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone's ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition that is my person." (p.171)

"Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do [...] Every regime, even the most authoritarian, survives in a state of unstable equilibrium, whereby it needs to justify the existence of its repressive apparatus, therefore of something to repress. The wish to write things that irk the established authorities is one of the elements necessary to maintain that equilibrium." (p.235-236)

"If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought [...] that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it." (p.256)

"Every new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings." (p.256)

"My gaze digs between the words to try to discern what is outlined in the distance, in the spaces that extend beyond the words 'the end.'" (p.256)

This was my second Mishima read, the first being 'The Temple of the Golden Pavillon' which I also thought was fantastic.

I now consider myself well enough acquainted with Mr. Mishima's style and preoccupations (as they overlap in these two novels at least) to make certain recommendations as well as offer words of caution.

Just as 'The Temple' gives us a host of unlikable but nevertheless fascinating characters, so too is 'Forbidden Colors' populated by people you likely wouldn't want to hang out with over a pint.

That being said, it's another triumph of storytelling. While 'The Temple' dazzled with Mishima's mastery of the first person narrator, 'Forbidden Colors' shows his strength as a writer of the third person, with all of the same vivid and razor-sharp observations of society, relationships, and with the same care and love taken to describe post-war Japan.

The place 'Forbidden Colors' holds in the global queer literary canon cannot be understated. Mishima (it is assumed semi-autobiographically) takes the reader on a tour of gay life at the time, describing, by turns, the sense of community and companionship, and the debauchery and loneliness. Indeed, many of the paradoxes of the queer community then apply to greater or lesser extent to the queer community now: the relief of letting your guard down among your 'fellows' and also the intense pressure to participate in the community the 'right' way. The worship of youth and disdain for age have been toxic staples of mainstream society since forever, but are sadly often amplified even within modern gay culture.

In short, from an anthropological standpoint, anyone interested in tracking the evolution of queer culture, or even just getting a historical sense could do much worse than 'Forbidden Colors' as long as it is kept in mind that many aspects have likely been dramatized and therefore that the picture painted by Mishima ought to be taken with a pinch of salt.

This leads rather well into the major criticism of this novel. Mishima, through the mouthpiece of the Lord Henry (if you will) to our protagonist's Dorian Gray is palpably misogynistic. It is Shunsuke's misogyny that pulls the strings of much of the plot, and indeed, what puts the plot into motion. Much as 'Lolita' is both about pedophilia and a heavy critique of it, 'Forbidden Colors' is about misogyny and also a critique of it. However, if you don't want to be subjected to reading an entire novel about that, this isn't for you. I should also add that this novel comes with several additional trigger warnings as it pertains to sexual assault.

I stand by a person's valid distaste for works of the above nature, however, let that not be confused for endorsement on the part of the text itself. Those who know more of Mishima's biography than I do may well point to his having been woman-hating and claim, therefore, that 'Forbidden Colors' is a poisonous fantasy of his set to paper. But if that is so, he made rather a mess of it.

The deeper into Shunsuke's fantasies of destroying the women he perceives to have wronged him protagonist Yuichi gets, the more off-putting he finds them, and the less willing he is to participate. The more his mentor rages at women, the more sympathetic Yuichi finds his wife. And in the end, when he's at his lowest, he turns to Mrs. Kaburagi (who he by this point has completely screwed over) and she not only forgives him, but helps him get out of trouble.

The ones that come across the worst in the narrative are undoubtedly the men. The pain inflicted on the women of the novel by Yuichi is never painted as triumphant or deserved, and we, the reader, ache with them as it is revealed that while they may be vapid or superficial or simple, they are no less deserving of decency. And just like that, the unreliable strokes Shunsuke painted them with in his resentment of their rejection crumbles. In this sense, 'Forbidden Colors' is a cautionary tale for men who feel entitled to the affection of women: it gives them the satisfaction of 'getting back at' the women who have rejected them, then forces them to face the real human cost.

The group to which 'Forbidden Colors' is genuinely uncharitable is gay men, revealing, perhaps, some internalized homophobia on the part of its author. Aspects of Yuichi's journey down the rabbit hole of the 'gay lifestyle' feel painfully cathartic. He yearns for the companionship of other gay men, but believes from top to bottom it will never make him as happy as loving a woman could. Being gay, according to Mishima, means to be hypersexual and promiscuous, shallow and aloof. When any of the men Yuichi sleeps with fall in love with him, they are immediately discredited by revealing some deep character flaw that precludes them from being a long-term partner. In this way, Mishima frames queerness as an inherent tragedy--a conclusion Yuichi himself reaches. His queerness leads to the ruin or near-ruin of many of those around him, including his wife and himself.

This all may hit too close to home to some queer readers, and this may not be a book for them either.

Why recommend it at all? one may therefore ask. Well, because just as 'Lolita' has inherent value for how brilliantly Nabokov rendered the depravity of Humbert Humbert while still managing to make him horrifyingly sympathetic until he himself can no longer believe his own slanted narration, so too does 'Forbidden Colors' have inherent value. Instead of the mind of a pedophile we enter the mind of an embittered old man and the world of his willing executioner. What begins as misogynistic revenge porn ends as a meditation on the horrifying consequences of getting what you want all wrapped up in the bow of Mishima's stunning prose.

Enter if you dare.

"Each poor soul I encounter, I've come to know, is my own." (p.329)
Even though the 'I' in the above quote is a specific character speaking after waking from fever dreams brought on by a nasty case of cholera, it's also the voice of the city of Bangkok/Krungthep.

The title, 'Bangkok Wakes to Rain' is doing so much work, and I love it.

Bangkok/Krungthep is inarguably the protagonist, so this personification is quite fitting. Bangkok is the 'watcher on the wall', the Nick Carraway that observes, records. "Who's doing the remembering?" "Here. This building, this ground." (p.317)

Then there's the 'Rain.'

If you take nothing else away from the reading experience, you will at least remember that it rains in Krungthep. A lot. It's just a really wet kind of place. And the rain definitely plays opposite the city, like the city and the rain are participating in a super elaborate table-top game, within which exist all the characters.

Like so:



Water and rain are present in every chapter, either as the driver of the plot as flooding forces thousands of residents to flee, or as background ambiance as students gather to demonstrate on the eave of the October 6 massacre.

Finally, 'Wakes.' I reckon that in the year of our lord 2022, most people are sick of things being called 'woke' because at this point it's lost pretty much all meaning. In its original form, however, when it first started appearing in AAVE, 'woke' was used as a means of explaining the phenomenon of going from a state of ignorance (willful or otherwise) to a state of awareness. It is this definition being invoked in this title.

There are many, many instances of characters going through life in a kind of dreamlike state before 'waking' to harsh realities, but the thing that makes this so perfect in the title is the realization (too late) that in their eagerness to build the city up (construction being an honorable mention background force/character), the weight of the new buildings--and the human souls within--are causing the city to sink. In the end, we're given snapshots of the consequences of this late awakening to the literal and figurative rain.

It's just such an amazing title, and other writers should take note when naming their own works.

This was the first Thai novel that made its way into my hands, and I really do feel like it was a great place to start because it examines so many important historical moments for both the city and the country more broadly, and was a great introduction to pertinant cultural and environmental issues impacting the development of the city and its culture right now.

And that's not even touching on the writing itself. Some of the lines describing the city are just lovely, and he has some really nice insights sprinkled throughout. Though I'm sure his exact line by line, word by word technique will strengthen in subsequent works, he displays immense talent in exposing very minute but nonetheless poignant human truths. Here are two of them:

"He was polite to a fault, his manners betraying a palpable shyness that arose from not wanting to inconvenience anyone." (p.73)

"He watched Nee [and] felt annoyed at how easily she could make herself be loved." (p.180)

Not everyone, however, had as good of a time during their stay in Sudbanthad's Bangkok.
A number of critiques of this novel revolve around the constant shifting of POV, and a lack of clear resolution for many of those POV characters. I think only a second (or third) reading would reveal if that's in fact true, but such a critique does seem to miss the point: all of the people (and animals!) whose journeys we follow are threads that, when woven together, form the city; the only thing that really endures even as, over time, it is reshaped by everyone born or sucked into it. Each thread is important, sure, since without them there is no tapestry, but do we need to follow each one from start to finish to really understand its significance?

A follow-up to that criticism that I find more valid is the non-linear chronology. 'Bangkok Wakes to Rain' goes all over the place timeline-wise. We start in (probably) the present, then suddenly we're in 19th century Siam, then we're in the 90s (maybe), then we're in the late 70s (definitely). It's a bit like riding a wooden roller coaster: afterwards half the riders will describe the experience as exhilerating, and the other half will complain of neck pain.

I think the style of reveal of information necessitated this choice and it didn't really bother me, especially once we got to the 'each poor soul I encounter [...] is my own' line and I was like 'ohhhh, ok, so I was right to understand that the city is the main character and that it is made up of the memories/experiences of its residents, though the soul of the city and the land it sits on is this kind of eternal sentience.'

Not going to be everyone's styalistic preference since it doesn't all come together in this neat bow like 'Cloud Atlas', (or does it?) but it certainly wasn't a thoughtless decision.

I personally walked away from 'Bangkok Wakes to Rain' soaked through but exhilerated, and perhaps even a little bit more awake and ready to experience it all again.

4.5

Full disclosure: I am a Shyam Selvadurai stan, and so reviewing one of his works objectively is quite impossible.

As in his debut novel 'Funny Boy,' Selvadurai does a deep-dive into the struggle of being a young gay man in a society in the midst of roiling change and violence.

Family and identity (and the ways in which they entertwine) are at the forefront of 'The Hungry Ghosts' just as in 'Funny Boy,' and in some ways, 'Hungry Ghosts' seems to be its sequal.

At the end of 'Funny Boy' the protagonist is poised to flee from Sri Lanka to Canada with his family, and in 'The Hungry Ghosts' much of the story takes place in Canada after a mother and her teenage children flee to Toronto as Tamil refugees.

There is so much texture to this novel, it's hard to choose one particular thread to follow when reviewing it. The simplest way to whittle down what exactly the story is to say that it's about the intersections within a person's identity and how those intersections can be incredibly painful when they rub up against each other as a person tries to self-actualize.

Protagonist Shivan is half Tamil and half Sinhalese, he's gay, he's the favorite of his family's powerful matriarch, later on he's an immigrant, and in Canada he also has the classifciation of 'non-white' foisted on him. And all of these different 'hats' he wears throughout his life come with certain trade-offs.

In Sri-Lanka, being half-Tamil places him in a potential position of marginalization, and being gay even more so. But, because of the protection granted him by his grandmother, an incredibly successful real-estate developer and someone with connections to a local mafia-style leader, he is afforded a very easy path to success. However, that easy path increasingly alienates him from his mother and sister, and comes at the additional cost of being able to pursue an open relationship with his boyfriend.

In Canada, he is free of the corruptive influence of his grandmother, and in a better position to live more openly as a gay man, but at the cost of the high-class lifestyle he enjoyed in Sri Lanka. Additionally, in Canada, because he is classified as 'non-white' he is subjected to racism in his day to day life, and rejection within the local queer community. To combat his lonliness, he falls into a series of unhealthy relationships.

When it finally seems that he's found a way to balance his various identities and form a life he's satisfied with (even if he had to sacrifice a relationship with his family for it), a tragedy from his past threatens to burn it all down.

Reading 'The Hungry Ghosts' gives readers such rich insight into what Sri Lanka was like in the 80s, a really solid grounding in the multitude of conflicts going on in the country at the time and how they fed into each other. At its heart, it's a very poignant portrait of a family in crisis, and even manages on top of that to deftly explore the landscape of immigration and integration.

Selvadurai seems to understand that his work is in large part being consumed by a non-Sri Lankan audience (specifically by a white, western audience), and is careful to provide context where necessary, though never in a way that takes one out of the reading experience.

All this to say nothing of the man's writing chops. By god, can Shyam Selvadurai write. His descriptive writing is immaculate. Just as in 'Funny Boy' he has such good instincts for how to integrate tactile details into his scenes to build atmosphere and to set tone. And it's never in a cartoony 'it was a dark and stormy night' sort of way. It's in the fabric of the places Shivan takes us; in the smells, the textures, his perceptions.

When Shivan's family first arrives in Canada our focus is drawn to the most obvious differences: the winter weather they've never experienced, the style of the architecture. But the longer they're there, and the more Shivan's initial rosy optimism about the move is beaten down by his realizations of the new limitations he faces, he starts to notice the garbage kicked off to the sides of the roads, how run-down the house they're living in is (even though when they first arrive he and his family are impressed by and proud of their new home). And again, it's all very, very subtle.

A real triumph for Selvadurai, and a great place to start if you've never read one of his books.

3.5/5
If you're not from the US, particularly from the American south, and you read this expecting to come away with a better understanding of American culture, this is the book for you. Not because I think 'No Country for Old Men' gives a realistic portrayal of daily life in Texas (now, I'm not from the south, let alone Texas, but I feel pretty comfortable assuming that the average Texan in 1980 wasn't witness to daily shootouts and massacres at hotels, though I'm prepared to be wrong).

Other reviewers have discussed McCarthy's mistakes when it comes to which types of guns can do what as well as his apparently numerous anachronisms, and I'm not qualified to go into those, but I do think he nonetheless captured something of the American spirit in this novel. Or, rather, the way I think a lot of Americans view themselves and the country they live in--particularly conservatives.

McCarthy was apparently pretty quiet about his personal political beliefs, and I don't think they should factor into anyone's reading of this book too much anyway (death of the author and all that). That being said, I daresay that 'No Country for Old Men' probably resonated with a lot of conservative American readers. The (to me) comical number of shootouts which necessitate gun ownership in this community and the general feeling that the police are always one step behind the criminals are talking points that American conservatives use in earnest even now in the 2020s. And they're used to prop up arguments in favor of individualism which this novel does as well to an extent.

But for all that I think 'No Country for Old Men' plays into deeply ingrained 'Wild West' tropes, I don't think it has a 'pro-American individualism' slant. If that were the case, the climax would have turned out quite differently and our protagonist wouldn't have been punished for taking the law into his own hands.

However, that doesn't make this a 'pro-collectivism' novel either. Sheriff Bell IS always one step behind, even by his own admission, so there isn't a hidden 'let your institutions take care of you' message here, nor do any of these people seem to deeply interact with anyone that isn't in their immidiate family.

So what DO I think the message of 'No Country for Old Men' is? At the risk of oversimplifying, I think it's: 'we're all screwed, but dammit, we should at least go down shooting.'

In some ways, it's almost the inverse of the modern conservative rallying cry of 'Make America Great Again.' This is where Sheriff Bell comes in. Here's a guy (our only first person POV character by the way) who expresses from the get-go that he doesn't understand what's become of his country. Who has incredibly rose-tinted reflections on how 'simple' life used to be before (not before all of the guns, mind, but before all of the drugs). Musings about his inability to understand what's going on or why it's happening. He's cynical, sure, but he's not going to DO anything about it. He's just going to hang up his hat and let the world burn around him.

Then there's our other protagonist, Moss. Moss has not grown up in Bell's America, and knows no other way than nihilistic individualism; 'you're on your own, so best get while the getting's good.' Now, Moss doesn't come out of the story as a 'winner,' but heck if you can't cheer him on for trying. This is one of the places where I get this 'we're all screwed, but dammit, we should at least go down shooting' vibe.

The other place, of course, is our antagonist.

There's been much discussion of what Anton Chigurh is supposed to represent, and I agree with many of those interpretations. But since my overall takeaway of this novel is that it's embodiying conservative (probably mosty White) anxieties about broader cultural shifts away from individualism, I think of Chigurh as the personification of 'Them;' the invisible, all-powerful enemy of freedom pulling the strings behind the scenes. Whoever the reader needs 'Them' to be: the government, corporations, etc.

This is best exemplified by his coversation with Moss's wife. She pleads with him that he doesn't have to kill her and he agrees. And he even points out that she 'didn't do anything wrong.' He goes on to say: "A person's path through the world seldom changes [...] And the shape of your path was visible from the beginning. [...] Yet even though I could have told you how all of this would end I thought it not too much to ask that you have a final glimpse of hope."

I think a lot of people can relate to this. They have lived much of their lives feeling 'free.' Free to make choices that they feel shape their lives. And it's really hard for such people to accept that in some ways that 'freedom' is artificial and a product of systems that may or may not favor them. Hence, why it's not unusual to hear Americans, even poor Americans, reject the notion that 'hard work' isn't always rewarded by monetary success and vice versa. They NEED that hope that one of those times, they'll call the coin correctly in order to feel like they have agency, when, as Moss's wife points out, her calling or not calling the coin correctly has no material bearing on whether or not Chigurh will shoot her.

This is also why I believe many readers see Moss as a ' tragic hero.' He has the opportunity to lift himself and his wife out of poverty and he takes it, even though he risks his life to do so, and even though doing so puts him at odds with 'Them' (those in power: the cartel bosses). But in the end, does this choice really signify 'agency?' I think the end of his story would suggest otherwise. Would suggest that even though he was clever, even though he did his best and arguably made all the 'right' choices, he was never going to get to keep that money.

Look at where Moss ends up and look at where Chigurh ends up. Chigurh gets shot multiple times and gets into a serious car crash, but in the end, he walks away to fight another day. If we accept my premise that Chigurh is a representation of 'Them,' then it's a pretty gloomy view of institutions and power structures.

And this doesn't exist in a vacuum. Many, many poor, White Americans name-drop 'Mexican drug dealers' as the 'Them' but for whom they'd be millionaires. But it was actually Anton Chigurh the whole time.