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3.6 AVERAGE
3.6 AVERAGE
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Intertwining stories across the eras and into the future set in and stemming from Krung Thep (Bangkok). It has wonderful nonlinear plotting, strong characters, and such a deep sense of place. It made me nostalgic for this fascinating city.
I enjoyed the nostalgia of reading about where I grew up as a teenager, but the writing and storytelling didn’t wow me. It felt clumsy most of the time, but I do look forward to future books from this author.
Visit the locations in the novel
The cover of this novel is captivating and it’s like putting up an umbrella – for when you open that cover, the stories, the images and more come flooding out, around your ears. You can hear the rain and the stories it brings. The sound of each droplet and the smell of it too. All the while, you stand feeling as if you are in a singular spot seeing so much of what is taking place around you.
It’s a novel that is at both a literary one full of various stories and voices, and a sci-fi/dystopian read of what could be in the future. That is some scope in one short novel, but it’s the author’s skill that allows you to time travel as smoothly as possible.
As you journey across centuries, the only constant is you, the reader, under that umbrella standing outside one building in Bangkok. That building sees people come and go, the building itself is changed and then is later neglected becoming a stain on the city. When the waters come however, life and history are washed away.
At the same time as the setting, the characters ebb and flow through the pages. Nee and Mai are the sisters who we follow through the novel. From their student days, via the riots and other historical events, through to old age and the challenge of living in a submerged city.
It’s quite a read and I struggled to see how it would all come together at first. Would the rain, the submerged city and the sci-fi/dystopian angle would be what oil is to water. It’s as if when you close the novel, you take down that umbrella. It’s then that you see the pattern of rain all around you and the circle, the cycle of a city and its people all around you.
I realise I’ve used a lot of imagery to do with rain and umbrellas in this novel but it really does provide strong images and things to think about. An unusual read which I would call a breath of fresh air. The setting provides the story as well as being the story itself.
This was an excellent book that was not served by its audiobook narration. This meandering, non-linear tale about various people, animals, and spirits, linked through time and relationships by one transforming house in a changing city, was voiced by one growly Scottish accented dude who legit could not voice women, Black southerners, or really anyone but one solitary character IMO. Which was a shame. Because, once I caught up with where this book was going, I really enjoyed it. It was multigenerational, it went from the past to the future into a disembodied life after death and back again so richly and skillfully it didn’t even phase me that characters were being added all over the place, and sometimes their afters came before their befores. What an astoundingly touching work exploring humanness and grief and imperfection in a shifting economic, political, and climatological Bangkok. I think this book deserved the Tommy Orange treatment, with multiple voice actors voicing individual characters, and honestly, I think the actors should have been Thai, like this book. I would def recommend the non-audiobook version to anyone, and I’m so so glad I persisted with it despite the format.
adventurous
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
The writing is wonderful, but I struggled to stay interested in the plot.
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Let me start by saying that, in general, I am not a big fan of short stories/fragmented narratives.
The author's writing style was good so the reading experience was more pleasant than with other similar books that I've previously read. Still, the scope of the story is so broad that I struggled to keep track of characters and events with each narrative jump and I'm sure I missed a lot of connections and nods to previous characters/plot points.
Also, I appreciated certain storylines much more than other ones (for example I quite liked the chapters focused on the character of Nee), so some parts were a bit of a slog to get through.
I didn't particularly like the chapters set in a futuristic reality but that's just my personal taste, as dystopian-like stories
are really not my cup of tea.
On a side note, some sections were a bit too graphic for me, for
example a segment describing in detail a plastic surgery operation that made me really uncomfortable and I think it could have been left out without much loss.
The author's writing style was good so the reading experience was more pleasant than with other similar books that I've previously read. Still, the scope of the story is so broad that I struggled to keep track of characters and events with each narrative jump and I'm sure I missed a lot of connections and nods to previous characters/plot points.
Also, I appreciated certain storylines much more than other ones (for example I quite liked the chapters focused on the character of Nee), so some parts were a bit of a slog to get through.
I didn't particularly like the chapters set in a futuristic reality but that's just my personal taste, as dystopian-like stories
are really not my cup of tea.
On a side note, some sections were a bit too graphic for me, for
example a segment describing in detail a plastic surgery operation that made me really uncomfortable and I think it could have been left out without much loss.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Racism, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Mass/school shootings, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Drug abuse, Gun violence, Excrement, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Alcoholism, Animal death, Cancer, Child abuse, Confinement, Cursing, Homophobia, Infidelity, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Vomit, War
Some parts were great, some - a bit boring. I think it would be much better, if it were shorter. But it did make me miss Bangkok.
I rarely give a 5-star rating, saving them for the books that I think will stay with me over time. It was initially hard to follow the meandering timeline and characters, but like Annie Proulx's Barkskins, the place is the main character. Unlike some other readers, I really enjoyed the future aspects of the story, and I see them as highly realistic. This is a book with a lot to chew on.