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A review by abbydee
Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad
Should have saved it for #monsoonreads! Instead I read this in the driest of dry seasons here. Ah well. Our ecological problems are different.
I read this out of a specific interest in books with consistent place and variable time. Sudbanthad pulls this off as elegantly as perhaps it can be done. The book’s pivot is the city of Krungthep/Bangkok, and more specifically a single house, but the linked stories are also stitched together by characters who overlap each other’s lives through the generations. And as with other books with a sort of similar conceit (When I Sing Mountains Dance), I wanted there to be something stronger or more urgent pulling all those stories together. I wanted narrative, not portrait. I appreciate the elegance but I still prefer an early sense of why, what are we doing here? What's the occasion? How exactly did all these people end up in the same book? Eventually I settled down and put my questions aside and enjoyed it very much, especially the futuristic cli-fi elements. But I’m still thinking about whether a place, on its own, is strong enough connective tissue to be satisfying.
I read this out of a specific interest in books with consistent place and variable time. Sudbanthad pulls this off as elegantly as perhaps it can be done. The book’s pivot is the city of Krungthep/Bangkok, and more specifically a single house, but the linked stories are also stitched together by characters who overlap each other’s lives through the generations. And as with other books with a sort of similar conceit (When I Sing Mountains Dance), I wanted there to be something stronger or more urgent pulling all those stories together. I wanted narrative, not portrait. I appreciate the elegance but I still prefer an early sense of why, what are we doing here? What's the occasion? How exactly did all these people end up in the same book? Eventually I settled down and put my questions aside and enjoyed it very much, especially the futuristic cli-fi elements. But I’m still thinking about whether a place, on its own, is strong enough connective tissue to be satisfying.