Satirical absurdity of Chou’s book
Ingrid Yang’s future is laid out cleanly before her: Get her Ph.D., marry her fiancé, get a tenure-track teaching job and eventually retire and die of old age. Her dissertation topic is the canonical Chinese American poet Xiao-Wen Chou — even though she’s Taiwanese American and has no real interest in his boring, straightforward style of verse.
But when a wrench is thrown into the equation, Ingrid’s life enters a disorienting spiral that brings her very self into question.
Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut novel “Disorientation” is funny from the get-go, in the kind of humor that is uncomfortable and sits in that discomfort until you have to at least chuckle.
Take, for example, Ingrid’s fiancé, Stephen. In the paragraph where he is formally introduced, the word “plain” is used six times, plus twice with near synonyms for plain, and finally he is likened to a sex offender when in the correct lighting. “But to Ingrid, he was perfect.”
OK, maybe not perfect. But nothing in Ingrid’s messy life is perfect. Her stress habits — like itching her eczema-stricken ankle and popping antacids and allergy pills like they’re illicit drugs — are increasing at an alarming rate. But when a mysterious note is left in the Xiao-Wen Chou archive, Ingrid believes she may have uncovered her ticket out of dissertation hell.
Though the story begins comically and simply, the mystery builds and the reveals are dramatic. As Ingrid solves more of the Xiao-Wen Chou puzzle, her world broadens and she begins to confront her often compliant — if not complicit — role in racism. Everything so carefully routine in Ingrid’s life begins to morph; her dissertation, her rivalry
with Vivian Vo, her friendship with Eunice Kim, her engagement to Stephen, and ultimately her understanding of herself.
“Disorientation” satirizes academia, PC culture and every other topic it touches, bringing into question the very etymology of its title. Occasionally veering toward absurdity, the novel finds its way back to painful reality in a dizzying-yet-delightful oscillation.
The novel often dips into other genres, embedding college newsroom articles and TV interview transcripts. It’s situational comedy, as wacky as an actual dream, but beneath the humorously bizarre veneer is a heart-rending analysis of Ingrid’s love life, complete with repressed memories, shame and bitter self-reflection.
Though you would never know it from how fun this wild ride is, “Disorientation” is a seminar bursting with lessons on race, gender and culture, complete with a bibliographical Notes section and everything. Chou clearly did her research. — Donna Edwards, Associated Press
In Stewart O’Nan’s “Ocean State,”
the first line reveals that a teen girl
was murdered — and also who did it. Angel killed Birdy, we learn, because they were both in love with the same boy, tangled in a passionate love triangle wrought with endless secrets and zealous anger. From there, O’Nan takes readers through the events leading up to Birdy’s fateful end, as well as the investigation that follows.
The book alternates between the perspectives of the women at the center of this tragedy. Angel and Birdy tell their own stories, but so, too, do Angel’s mother, Carol, and her sister, Marie, who are dealing with their own personal struggles while also coming to terms with the fact that a person they fiercely love did something unimaginable.
“Ocean State” is, above all else, a story of the things love does to us, both the beautiful and terrible.
The book will pull a reader in immediately, but it ultimately falls flat in delivering the plot-twisting suspense it’s opening seems to promise. What you learn on that first page ultimately comes to light in more or less the way you would expect, without any shocking twists or turns to explain why the answer is given away so quickly.