A review by rinnie
We, the Survivors by Tash Aw
5.0
I really really enjoyed this one. picked it up at random from the bargain bookshop, and fell into the story immediately. the narrative style is gripping and well-crafted.
something I noticed from the very first page: Aw builds such a sense of place. it's descriptive and you sink into the feeling, the idea of the setting, not just in a physical sense but an emotional one too, not overly flowery or exceedingly detailed, but detailed in just the right ways that it feels like a real place, like you could be there alongside Ah Hock as he describes his life.
this is not a book about a murder, in the end. it's about society and class and ethnicity and what fighting to escape poverty can do to someone. it's about societal relationships in every way. the murder is secondary, in a way, even though the entire book builds to it. there's a reason you only find out exactly what happens at the end (I saw a review complain about this) — it's because the rest of his story sets the scene and context for that moment, until the murder itself becomes almost irrelevant, despite also being the core of the story.
“The rhythmic arc of her arm. The strength of her back as it curved to bring the blade down onto the foliage, time and time again. She moved methodically, as if she knew the effect of every cut of the parang — as if she was trying to match her strength to that of nature, and she knew she could win… I was not yet thirteen, and my body was ready to imitate my mother's. I copied her movements, learned to use the axe with speed and certainty, until after just a couple of days I no longer had to think about what I was doing. The tools became part of me."
“The number didn't hold any meaning for me. It was the same as if they'd told me it was a hundred, or a thousand times. I remember raising my arm time and time again until it felt like the one thing my arm was capable of doing, that it had been created for that purpose and nothing else.”
these paragraphs, combined with how the entire book makes a point of how work wears on the body, imprints on the body, how the body remembers or becomes (un)used to certain kinds of work, the emotional state of trying to survive in a brutal and uncaring and corrupt world… it's clear how the story ends where it does. plus the brusqueness of the ending, almost out of place. again, someone richer than Ah Hock, someone with more power and more status and more everything, using him. the labor he does for her in telling his story so that she can make a book of it. how he says it's her book, and she can do what she wants, and why is she asking him for permission? the way he attempts to recoup control through a sort of violence — verbal, by telling her OF the violence that weighs heavy on him. despite a feeling of a reciprocal relation, it's really not. having his mother appear by that pond at the end at the party is maybe a bit heavy-handed, but it certainly is effective.
this building of the story and of the purpose of the book through parallels and repeated symbols and themes across time and moments is something I love in storytelling, and Aw did this really well
something I noticed from the very first page: Aw builds such a sense of place. it's descriptive and you sink into the feeling, the idea of the setting, not just in a physical sense but an emotional one too, not overly flowery or exceedingly detailed, but detailed in just the right ways that it feels like a real place, like you could be there alongside Ah Hock as he describes his life.
this is not a book about a murder, in the end. it's about society and class and ethnicity and what fighting to escape poverty can do to someone. it's about societal relationships in every way. the murder is secondary, in a way, even though the entire book builds to it. there's a reason you only find out exactly what happens at the end (I saw a review complain about this) — it's because the rest of his story sets the scene and context for that moment, until the murder itself becomes almost irrelevant, despite also being the core of the story.
Spoiler
in particular the segment on p. 184 describing him and his mother working their plot of land with p. 320, when the violence happens:“The rhythmic arc of her arm. The strength of her back as it curved to bring the blade down onto the foliage, time and time again. She moved methodically, as if she knew the effect of every cut of the parang — as if she was trying to match her strength to that of nature, and she knew she could win… I was not yet thirteen, and my body was ready to imitate my mother's. I copied her movements, learned to use the axe with speed and certainty, until after just a couple of days I no longer had to think about what I was doing. The tools became part of me."
“The number didn't hold any meaning for me. It was the same as if they'd told me it was a hundred, or a thousand times. I remember raising my arm time and time again until it felt like the one thing my arm was capable of doing, that it had been created for that purpose and nothing else.”
these paragraphs, combined with how the entire book makes a point of how work wears on the body, imprints on the body, how the body remembers or becomes (un)used to certain kinds of work, the emotional state of trying to survive in a brutal and uncaring and corrupt world… it's clear how the story ends where it does. plus the brusqueness of the ending, almost out of place. again, someone richer than Ah Hock, someone with more power and more status and more everything, using him. the labor he does for her in telling his story so that she can make a book of it. how he says it's her book, and she can do what she wants, and why is she asking him for permission? the way he attempts to recoup control through a sort of violence — verbal, by telling her OF the violence that weighs heavy on him. despite a feeling of a reciprocal relation, it's really not. having his mother appear by that pond at the end at the party is maybe a bit heavy-handed, but it certainly is effective.
this building of the story and of the purpose of the book through parallels and repeated symbols and themes across time and moments is something I love in storytelling, and Aw did this really well