Exquisite descriptions

The South
Tash Aw

I knew from the first chapter that I was going to love this book. It is about two boys (or, more accurately, two people ‘no longer boys…but not yet men’) and the relationship that develops between them one summer. The novel captures the intensity of the desire that the protagonist, Jay, feels for Chuan with beautiful observations such as ‘in his longing he has anticipated the way every second will unfold’ and ‘he reaches out and touches Chuan’s arm, and it is like touching a trigger, because suddenly he cannot hear his breath, cannot hear anything, just a hollow ringing in his ears as if he is underwater’. The novel is also honest about the ambivalence of desire; in the first chapter Jay, even as he is desperate to touch Chuan, ‘is ‘seized by something between fear and indecision’.

Jay and Chuan’s story isn’t the only aspect of this book; it has many layers. The boys’ relationship develops while Jay is visiting the farm on which Chuan’s father works and there are delightful, but also heartbreaking, descriptions of the land – of its beauty but also of its decline as a result of drought. In addition, chapters about Jay and Chuan are interleaved with ones about Jay’s parents and the way their relationship began and developed; the juxtaposition of these two narratives adds depth.

Further, in a move I particularly appreciated, the novel also explores the complex relationship between one’s young and adult self. The novel begins in the third person before shifting to the first; this continues throughout and it soon becomes clear that the ‘I’ is Jay as a grown-up. The fact that he hides behind the third person narration half the time seems apt, as the novel reflects on the schism between past and present; Jay tells us ‘I wanted to hold on to that moment but already felt myself parting with it’ and, in a passage I especially loved, ‘I knew I would never fully be able to distance myself from the person I was at that precise moment, trapped by his own frustration, inexplicably powerless, incapable of exerting willpower over a situation, of finding a light-hearted thing to say, of shrugging off mishap’.  

I have, I realise, quoted extensively from the novel in this account. I couldn’t resist – it is full of many beautifully expressed phrases that I wanted so much to share. With some novels I love, I’m happy to be their only fan; with this one, I desperately want you to love it too.