A review by jaanasingh
Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu
2.0
I theoretically read this as part of a book club but also read this in a sum total of about 2 hours so I may come back post-discussion and add some flavor to this review (example: I read The Sellout as part of a book club and liked it much more post-discussion than I did otherwise, and in a lot of ways these two books are quite similar).
I think I read this book very quickly because I didn't like it and wanted it to be over. The structure is ambitious and quirky but I didn't really find it funny and I knew it was trying to be so it was a bit awkward. Then, I got to the courtroom scenes and really enjoyed those parts. My main problem with the book is that it was exposing an issue that I was already familiar with, but without putting any original thought into the exposition. The courtroom scene remedied that, but I don't know if it was enough to overshadow the hitherto lack of depth. Because I am a Punjabi Sikh I think the brief two mentions of the Singh character were fascinating in the larger context of the story, and I wonder if he was intentionally brought into the story to showcase the hypocrisy(?) of the courtroom arguments or if I'm looking into it too much.
I think I read this book very quickly because I didn't like it and wanted it to be over. The structure is ambitious and quirky but I didn't really find it funny and I knew it was trying to be so it was a bit awkward. Then, I got to the courtroom scenes and really enjoyed those parts. My main problem with the book is that it was exposing an issue that I was already familiar with, but without putting any original thought into the exposition. The courtroom scene remedied that, but I don't know if it was enough to overshadow the hitherto lack of depth. Because I am a Punjabi Sikh I think the brief two mentions of the Singh character were fascinating in the larger context of the story, and I wonder if he was intentionally brought into the story to showcase the hypocrisy(?) of the courtroom arguments or if I'm looking into it too much.