All but one of the stories are written from the point of view of teenagers coming to terms with a confusing adult world. And although the setting for each story is Thailand, Lapcharoensap steers well clear of the kind of exoticism that bedevils most South-East Asian literature. Indeed, the Thailand of the tourist brochure is roundly mocked in the opening story Farangs. Says a hotel proprietor, tourists only want "pussy and elephant":
"You give them history, temples, pagadas, traditional dance, floating markets, seafood curry, tapioca desserts, silk-weaving cooperatives, but all they really want is to to ride some hulking gray beast like a bunch of wildmen and to pant over girls and to lie there half-dead geting skin cancer on the beach during the time in between."There's a gritty social realism in his choice of settings: a down-market brothel, a smouldering rubbish-dump, a refugee shanty, cockpits, with many of the characters living on the edge in economic terms. Lapcharoensap has his characters speak in a street-smart, vernacular language which eliminates the distance still further.
In a collection this strong, it's hard to pick favourites. But I won't easily forget the poignant tale of a son taking his mother on one last holiday before she looses her sight in the title story, and the agonising betrayal of a childhood friendship in Draft. And the last story in the book, Cockfighter - at 80 pages more a novella than a short story - is a real heart-stopper.
I've not felt this enthusiastic about a short story collection since Jhumpa Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies . And if I were still teaching literature at college level, I'd choose this as a set-text for sure.
(You can hear Rattawat Lapcharoensap talk about his book and read an excerpt in this recording from the Guardian blog. I also wrote a previous post about the author here.)
6 comments:
i absolutely love this book!!! met rattawut at this year's singapore writer's festival and bought a copy right after his talk. figured that if he wrote as well as he spoke, his book would be a delicious treat. one of those books that gives you a sinking feeling when the number of pages on the right start getting thinner. :)
i loved the book!!!
read one of his hilarious stories in the guardian online a few weeks back and would be interested to get this book... & oh hey...what's wrong with wanting only 'pussy and elephant'? i tought that's the reason why everybody goes to thailand for? ...temples? no, that's just an excuse...
btw, did he win the award he was shortlisted for?
a lot of applause it seems ... which makes me all the sadder that i didn't go down to singapore ... please kick me next time starlight, ms d. i need dragging by the scuff of my neck.
greenbottle - i go to thailand for the temples ... he did not win the guardian first book award but his was the only work of fiction shortlisted so that in itself speaks volumes ...
I found the hardcover version of the book and bought it because I thought I wanted to show to my publisher how my book is suppose to look like. And then I ended up reading Sightseeing. I've throughly enjoyed the book, although I have an inkling suspicion that most Thai books written in the vernacular language are written without the exoticism of local culture.
Elepussy!
Yeah.
Muahahaha.
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