Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Interior Chinatown

🎬RE👏🏾PRE🎬SEN👏🏾TA🎬TION👏🏾 🎬MAT👏🏾TERS🎬 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 REPRESENTATION MATTERS !!!

One of the best details that gave it extra points is that it's about the same time reading as it would be for an actual script for a regular feature length film. 5 stars for the audiobook. Of the few audiobooks I've listened to, they're produced very dry, just a persom reading to you, but this one has sounds effects and little fun details that make the already vibrant story really come alive.

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chalkletters's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

Interior Chinatown is unlike anything else I’ve read. The book is written as if it were a TV show, with exterior and interior shots and dialogue laid out in script format, but it’s also about a TV show and the lines between what’s ‘real’ in the universe of the book versus what’s only acting are never terribly clear. Charles Yu writes in the second person, which was much more palatable than the second person narrative in The Raven Tower.

Despite the confusion about what was happening, Interior Chinatown managed to maintain interest. The reflections on living as an Asian-American weren’t subject to the same uncertainly as the action of the plot; the descriptions of living in the SRO above the Golden Palace restaurant (or the film set of the restaurant…) were particularly memorable.

The romance was sweet, though the rapid jumps in timeline meant it didn’t have as deep an emotional impact as it might otherwise have done. The biggest problem with Interior Chinatown was that it set the scene at one pace but then sped through the rest of the story so much faster that it felt disjointed.

It was a surprise to find Interior Chinatown listed as a comedy; the comedic tone didn’t come through, though that may be because Charles Yu was parodying a specifically American experience. The section which was supposed to be a children’s show was particularly surreal, so that may have been funny to people who found comedy in Geek Love.

Overall, Interior Chinatown probably merits a second read at some point in the future.

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cinnamonandpancakes's review

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challenging emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I read this book extremely fast, I was hooked from the very beginning. Having it formatted as a screenplay seems like a gimmick at first but I found it to actually be a really clever way of creating this sense of the narrator's emotional distance from the people in his life and lent a feeling of unreality to everything.

This book doesn't hold its punches, or refrain from sliding a stiletto between your ribs, but it's so well done that you can't help admiring the skill involved.

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thewordsdevourer's review against another edition

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challenging funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.25

interior chinatown is an acerbic, funny, incisive satire exploring the machinations of the marginalization of asians in america, and how the latter - without much of a choice - learn to cope w/ their reality.

its comedy is rooted in its easily recognized dark truth. i also like how yu delves into not only the historical aspect of said marginalization and discrimination, but also the issue's complexity - and conplex relationship - in relation to anti-black racism, though the book's structure does make my head spin at times.

this novel indeed - to paraphrase its main character - says all the shit that asians never say, didnt even know how to say.

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