A review by abbie_
The South by Tash Aw

emotional reflective slow-paced

3.0

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

I was drawn to this one as it was a queer coming of age set in Malaysia, centring a family going through some serious shifts in their lives. My main gripe with it is that I genuinely felt like my edition was missing 100 pages off the start. We’re thrown in with these characters without a life raft, things are mentioned like we’re supposed to know it, characters do things with seemingly no reasoning, relationships are already formed and built within a few pages. It just felt lacking in development from the get go. By the end it was slightly better, but yeah, a bit weird!

The writing was lovely, Tash Aw paints a countryside scene vividly. I also appreciated the commentary about farmers losing their livelihoods because of demand from rich folks wanting tourist traps in the country.

Liked it, but not a love for me.