A review by skconaghan
Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad

challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

The story is a walk with varied characters across a century whose lives intertwine in one particular apartment building in the city of Krung Thep (Krung Them Maha Nakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahin Thara Ayuthaya Maha Dilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Maha Sathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit…), modern day Bangkok.

The writer transports us to the City of Angels of old with it’s tastes and smells, floating markets and towering pagodas, into the present technological age of towering skyscrapers and its obsession with the Lifestyles & Faces of the West & Famous, and delivering a compelling possible future of a flooded unstable structure where the Plastic and the Palpable still thrive despite the impossibilities a crumbling ozone has left us to endure. 

A journey across interwoven timelines of the lives of multiple characters as they pass one another in realtime or through the generations, occupying the same space if not the same time, exploring their loves and losses, experiencing their journeys within the complex city, and going with them too, as life takes them far away from the place that made them to lands where their identity becomes a thing of confusion, and is perceived either as exotic or a means of exclusion.

The writing is beautiful, poetic, and in a sense epic, though often understated. This literary work of art is a piece that crosses the millennial marker and awakens memories we didn’t know we contained…