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A review by mairispaceship
Batshit Seven by Sheung-King
3.0
I really don't know what I think about this book. This is a hard one to review. For what it's worth, I absolutely adored [a:Sheung-King|20551761|Sheung-King|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1610526918p2/20551761.jpg]'s debut novel, [b:You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked.|58236659|You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked.|Sheung-King|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1622575777l/58236659._SX50_.jpg|85405439]. I recommended it to so many people and I even put it on my favourites shelf. So when I learned the author was writing this one, I pre-ordered it immediately. Again, not something I usually do but I wanted to show my support.
I've now finally finished reading Batshit Seven and... Well, I'm not sure? It's a really strange story about identity, orientalism, and cultural displacement... And it's also about constipation and the main character's penis. Yeah...
Some of the time, the author's voice was intelligent, effortlessly quoting Fanon and Marx and making well-informed jabs at Canadian and Hong Kong society. I loved how temporally specific it was, the cultural references so perfectly painted a sense of space in time... Kind of like a Wong Kar Wai film but about today's cultural zeitgeist. And then it would slip back into a chapter, or two, or three where the main character just talks about getting high and masturbating. Again, and again?
I think, and I might be wrong here, Batshit Seven is a coming of age story about that sort of post-university time when you hit the "real world" and go "oh shit is this it?". You're still brimming with the intellectualism of university life, but you haven't quite cracked the 9-5, and you're burning through the only relationships you have. The main character felt like a kid. A smart kid who knows a lot about a lot of things, but still a kid - and one with his hands down his trousers at that.
I described this book at about the halfway point to a friend as "both intellectually complex and dumb as shit", and honestly as I write this review that's all I can think of.
Rated 2.5, rounded up to 3 out of respect to the author.
I've now finally finished reading Batshit Seven and... Well, I'm not sure? It's a really strange story about identity, orientalism, and cultural displacement... And it's also about constipation and the main character's penis. Yeah...
Some of the time, the author's voice was intelligent, effortlessly quoting Fanon and Marx and making well-informed jabs at Canadian and Hong Kong society. I loved how temporally specific it was, the cultural references so perfectly painted a sense of space in time... Kind of like a Wong Kar Wai film but about today's cultural zeitgeist. And then it would slip back into a chapter, or two, or three where the main character just talks about getting high and masturbating. Again, and again?
I think, and I might be wrong here, Batshit Seven is a coming of age story about that sort of post-university time when you hit the "real world" and go "oh shit is this it?". You're still brimming with the intellectualism of university life, but you haven't quite cracked the 9-5, and you're burning through the only relationships you have. The main character felt like a kid. A smart kid who knows a lot about a lot of things, but still a kid - and one with his hands down his trousers at that.
I described this book at about the halfway point to a friend as "both intellectually complex and dumb as shit", and honestly as I write this review that's all I can think of.
Rated 2.5, rounded up to 3 out of respect to the author.