I’m still a bit puzzled by this memoir’s structure.
I feel like I should not be as disoriented as I am—like I am falling short as an editor and literary analyst—but perhaps disorientation and the ensuing discomfort were part of Zauner’s thematic project. Because whatever questions I may have about why this book is part collection of essays, part time-restricted story—and whether that works for me—the book left a definite mood on me. The smell of this book is all over my hands and mouth. It sweats from my pores as if I’d been eating all the messy kimchi, fried chicken, noodles, multiethnic ambivalence, and intergenerational tension which the author described for 240 fragrant, grease-stained pages.
The impression the book gave me won’t wash off: it stinks of unmet expectations and desperate love, of barriers that are bridges, of the hollowness a person can experience and how full one gets at the same time while trying to feast on the expectations of others. So I suppose on the most important level this book succeeded. It stuck to me.
Read my full review here.
