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A review by corinnekeener
Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin
3.0
We read and discussed Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin for episode 58 of The Bookstore. It's a podcast about books. You can find it most anywhere you get your podcasts.
Notes of a Crocodile, probably more than any other work of translated fiction I've ever read, required context before reading. And I didn't read that context until about three-quarters of the way through. My bad!
Told in 8 loosely themed, not entirely chronological notebooks, Lazi (the otherwise unnamed narrator) writes about her time at university in Taipei in the late 80's-early 90's. She details the angst ridden dramatics of her fraught first relationship with a woman. This goes on at a length that 30-year-old me found, honestly, exhausting. Entire sections would be ruminations on feelings, but would never quite give an idea of what was literally happening in her life. It was a little like reading my own diary from when I was 18. More eloquent, but about as fun as reading "no one understands me" written over and over and over with different pens, in cursive, in all caps, with a crayon, oh and now backwards. I would have liked to have seen more of her life as a way to illustrate what she was going through. And way, way more about the antics of her (sorry about it) much more interesting queer friends.
Interspersed throughout are "crocodile" chapters, satirical and surreal pieces that illustrate how strange it must have been to be queer at that time and place when Taiwan's media was obsessed with lesbians as though they were a different species of person entirely. I found these to be the most interesting parts of the novel, most reflective of the experience of being both an object of fascination and revulsion for the general public.
Though I found the organization of the novel to be baffling, in general, I think this is a solid book for most readers. I think it could easily replace the more standard "young adult out in the world for the first time, figuring herself out, falling in love, falling out of love, being an irritating 19 year old" novels that we all know and love. While I really thought the novelty of the crocodile scenes were superb, I think I may have out grown some of the angsty-charms of the rest of the novel.
Notes of a Crocodile, probably more than any other work of translated fiction I've ever read, required context before reading. And I didn't read that context until about three-quarters of the way through. My bad!
Told in 8 loosely themed, not entirely chronological notebooks, Lazi (the otherwise unnamed narrator) writes about her time at university in Taipei in the late 80's-early 90's. She details the angst ridden dramatics of her fraught first relationship with a woman. This goes on at a length that 30-year-old me found, honestly, exhausting. Entire sections would be ruminations on feelings, but would never quite give an idea of what was literally happening in her life. It was a little like reading my own diary from when I was 18. More eloquent, but about as fun as reading "no one understands me" written over and over and over with different pens, in cursive, in all caps, with a crayon, oh and now backwards. I would have liked to have seen more of her life as a way to illustrate what she was going through. And way, way more about the antics of her (sorry about it) much more interesting queer friends.
Interspersed throughout are "crocodile" chapters, satirical and surreal pieces that illustrate how strange it must have been to be queer at that time and place when Taiwan's media was obsessed with lesbians as though they were a different species of person entirely. I found these to be the most interesting parts of the novel, most reflective of the experience of being both an object of fascination and revulsion for the general public.
Though I found the organization of the novel to be baffling, in general, I think this is a solid book for most readers. I think it could easily replace the more standard "young adult out in the world for the first time, figuring herself out, falling in love, falling out of love, being an irritating 19 year old" novels that we all know and love. While I really thought the novelty of the crocodile scenes were superb, I think I may have out grown some of the angsty-charms of the rest of the novel.