A review by serendipitysbooks
Edinburgh by Alexander Chee

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 Edinburgh was an absolutely beautifully written heartbreaking novel. Aphias "Fee" Zhe is of Korean Scottish descent. He is sexually abused by his choir director but blames himself for not speaking up and preventing him from abusing others. This abuse continues to haunt him and impact his life well into adulthood. The writing at the word and sentence level was exquisite. I loved the inclusion of Korean folklore for what it added to the story. I particularly admire the way Chee didn't spoon feed the reader, but trusted them to read between the lines, to understand what happened off page and to intuit character's motivations. My personal enjoyment of this novel deteriorated as time went on due to the characters' actions and some plot points. When Fee was a child and young teen, dealing with abuse and figuring out his own sexuality, my sympathies were all with him. I could even cut him some slack as an older teen/new adult for some of his self-destructive practices because of his trauma and grief. But when he was a fully fledged adult who slept with one of his students, my sympathy and understanding ended. And yet, while I didn't necessarily enjoy these and other later plot developments, I very much admired and appreciated what Chee was doing by forcing the reader to question their own moral and ethical compass, by making them articulate the differences between Big Eric's actions towards the choir boys, and Fee's towards Warden and then decide the extent to which they mattered. I love books that explore complicated issues and don't offer easy, pat solutions. Edinburgh certainly delivered in that regard. 
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