Novel captures awkward longing of young love
You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. By Sheung-King Book*hug Press
Like its title, Sheung-King's debut novel You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked, is a singular depiction of the intimate moments that linger in one's memory long after a relationship has ended.
“A part of me always thought that if I wrote about you enough, you'd stop disappearing,” thinks our unnamed narrator. This book is his noble effort, as he recounts his relationship with a woman who left him in extensive, careful detail — brands of clothing and cigarettes, restaurant orders — as if he is afraid to forget anything. He even adds footnotes.
As in a Wong Kar-wai film, Sheung-King's clearest influence, the novel is structured in non-linear vignettes of a sweet, playful romance shadowed by insecurity.
The narrator's nameless girlfriend is elusive and mysterious, despite his attempts to pin her down on the page.
Haruki Murakami is another stated influence on SheungKing, but his book is reminiscent of a different novelist: Sally Rooney, and her ability to render heartbreaking and emotional moments in plain, direct prose. Like Rooney, Sheung-King is masterful at the self-conscious exchanges between two young people who want to impress and amuse each other with their conversational skills.
Their dialogues are also punctuated by the narrator's impromptu storytelling. The narrator has an endless supply of eastern folk tales and is always trying to hang on to his girlfriend's fleeting with an unexpected story.
This is a conversational novel, yet Sheung-King is equally interested in all the places language can't reach.
Through his precise prose, he conjures the inarticulable emotions of longing and heartbreak.
If you have ever been young and in love, this book will transport you there again.