A twisty tale of travel, love and hope

The perfect place to hide from your past may be suburban New Jersey. That's what Tiller, the young narrator of Changrae Lee's new book My Year Abroad thinks. In his sixth novel, Lee records the adventures of this college dropout in a wild tale that moves coolly between satire and thriller.

Twenty-year-old Tiller is supposed to be in college on an overseas program, but he has secretly spent the last few months on a series of bizarre adventures in Asia.

Upon their conclusion, he shacks up with a new girlfriend, Val, and her son, who are in a witness protection program and share Tiller's penchant for hiding in plain sight. Val doesn't pry into Tiller's troubles as he attempts to process recent tumultuous events that have left him “smashed to raw bits.”

The best way to forget your problems? Find new ones.

The seemingly sweet Tiller gets wrapped up in Val's troubles, nonchalantly slashing the tire of a sinister man looking for her. That he is capable of such an action regardless of the consequences, he explains, is a result of whatever happened to him during his time in Asia, as he is a changed person, capable of darkness and unafraid of death.

My Year Abroad is quite a departure — in tone, language and backdrop — from Lee's previous canon of work — a testament to the Pulitzer-nominated author's virtuosity. My Year Abroad is set in the present day and punctuated by the vibrant and colourful language of a college kid.

Lee paints Shenzhen, Macau and finally an unnamed valley in Guangdong as the pulsing backdrops for the kinds of very real fortunes being made in China today, and the wild ambitions and audacious brutality of a menacing cast that aspire to them.

Through Tiller's sweet vulnerability and his steadfast grasp on hope, Lee tells a story of what it means to be plucked from darkness into the light of recognition, and in doing so, explores the fundamental human desires to be seen and to love.