DNF: Interior Chinatown

by Charles Yu

Did not finish. The style is doing most of the heavy lifting here. If this same story were told in a straightforward way, it would be sappy and melodramatic. It made me think of The Intuitionist, but that book was more subtle, artful, and had other points to make and more of a story to tell.

I gave this one 100 pages, but I have other things I really want to read, so I’m moving on. Although it does have its moments – here is a passage I marked:

At a karaoke bar, watch for a certain older “Asian businessman standing patiently in line for his turn, his face warmly rouged on Crown or Japanese lager, and when he steps up and starts slaying Country Roads, try not to laugh, or wink knowingly or clap a little too hard, because by the time he gets to ‘West Virginia, mountain mama,’ you’re going to be singing along, and by the time he’s done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Strait who’s been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home.” (66)