Reviews with content warning for Abandonment - Last Night at the Telegraph Club

A beautifully challenging story for anyone who has journeyed to love themselves and love another; to find who they are when the world says there must be something wrong. A validating story that truly details how scary and overwhelming it it can be to live an unapologetically authentic life. Although the time period falls in the 1950s, it sadly reads like a relatable story for far too many people today. That said, each moment of love, community, and unrelenting truth continued to create the hope we all need in this world.

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emfass's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

Oh god, my heart. I loved this book. Also realized in reading it that I don't think I've read much historical fiction with queer characters at the center. I cannot fully express what it meant to me to spend time with a character coming into her queerness in the 1950s. It was heartbreaking and validating all at once.

I also ended up loving the interludes where Lo added chapters from the point of view of Lily's parents and aunt, to give voice to the many ways immigration, racism, and living a life spanning multiple cultures affects people.

I deeply appreciate the way Malinda Lo incorporated so much research as well as inspiration from her own family to create such a realistic, respectful view into San Francisco's Chinatown in the 1950s. I also loved reading her Author's Note at the end, which gave historical context to so much of the story.

I listened to this on audio and narrator Emily Woo Zeller was wonderful.

This is going to be one of my favorite reads of 2023.

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tangleroot_eli's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

Beautiful and heartbreaking. I love how much is going on in this book. Lily doesn't just realize she's a lesbian and fall in love. She finds queer community and starts learning the culture. She thinks about future careers. She navigates her shifting relationship with her childhood best friend. She worries about her father being deported, and about whether her being gay increases the risk of that. She tries to balance her love for her family, community, and culture of origin with her love for herself and her need to be true to her own identity. She faces her family's homophobia and the mostly white lesbian community's racism and xenophobia. Other characters have lives independent from Lily's, and sometimes there's friction where those lives overlap.

This isn't just "realizing you're gay and falling in love"; it's "realizing you're gay and falling in love while living in a world where everything else keeps happening."

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clemrain's review against another edition

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emotional informative sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Lo has a distinct style of writing. I enjoy her attention to detail. Her dialogues are realistic, but a lot of conversation happens in the thoughts and how they are read and how Lo describes those interactions. Which I think is key for the types of family and time period Lo is writing.

I think the most dynamic and understandable character in this book was Shirley Lum. Would I want a friend like her? No. But she was an interesting character. She had a reputation to uphold and held secrets. She understood the repercussions. She, to me, was the daughter of an Asian immigrant. She found her best friend in a similar situation and the first thing she did was try to dig her out of it. Unfortunately,

Spoiler

she was very homophobic in her approach.

Shirley Lum was a lot more realistic and easy to relate to.

Lily’s jealousy of Shirley was a huge catalyst for much of her actions. However, those actions of sticking to truth over consequence presented her as above it all. This childishness in her to hold on to something so new yet so innate, caused a lot of anger in me. I couldn’t understand how she could be so reckless. Though the actions are incredible and something to strive for. I just couldn’t see Lily making those choices. She just wasn’t developed enough. All I’ve seen of her is her relishing in the community at the telegraph club. Her falling in love with someone she only knows on a surface level. How could these things persuade her to so easily stand up and loose the love of her family? It just isn’t realistic. I don’t understand how Lily went from point A to point B.

Kath just seemed like a love interest and nothing was interesting about her past her conversations with Lily about science. The meat of the historical moments sat with Kath.

Spoiler

What happened to her during her raid? How did her family react?

Still, even as a romantic interest, I kept thinking what were her feelings for Lily past the romantic? Flat character.

I didn’t understand what the point of the timeline was. As much as I liked reading about Lily’s family, I could’ve also done without having whole chapters dedicated to them. What I was told in those little chapters could’ve been condensed and delivered more efficiently.

All that to say, I can imagine this novel as a movie or even as a short story (which it was at one point). I think it didn’t effectively make use of its length. There was a lot of redundancy in scenes and much of the story could’ve been reduced.

Spoiler

I wish the raid had happened earlier so we could’ve gotten more of what happened after instead of having multiple bar scenes that ultimately showed the same point.

The ambition of talking about Chinese immigrants as well as the butch/queer scene of America as well as communism and America all in one novel was high. These three big ideas can coexist but in this novel they were not fully realized. There was too much going on and majority of it had no time to truly be resolved.

The ending was too rushed. The first half of the book took a while to ramp up. But I enjoyed it. It was so deeply researched and written. The intimate and realistic depiction of Lily learning about her queerness accompanied by the harsh reality of being Asian was gorgeous and relatable. But what was set up so carefully in the first part of the book did not pay off with such detail and satisfaction in the last part of the book.

For what it was, it was beautiful. It was well written. Ambitious. And at the core of it, it really was just a story about a girl whose identity was much bigger than she could begin to understand and live at such a young age. I wish we just could’ve seen her fight against it and learn from it a bit more.

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filipa_maia's review against another edition

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hopeful informative inspiring sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

This book is a must read!

Malinda Lo created a story with so many layers that is impossible that you don't feel connected with the characters. The way Lily discovers her sexuality and her love for Kath is so well written that makes you root for them. I spent half of the story rooting for them not to be discovered and the other half just wishing that they could tell the world about their love (and also very worried about the implications of that love for them and Lily's family).

Discovering this "underground world" with Lily was very interesting and such an important and informative reading.

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terrestrial_river's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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