Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Having visited Thailand a few times now, I was eager to find a work of modern fiction that captures the Thai experience. This book is exactly what I was looking for. Having ties to both Thailand and the US, Lapcharoensap moves effortlessly between the two cultures and is strongest in stories where cultures intersect and often clash.
All stories are presented in the first person, but the narrator varies considerably from story to story: men, women, young, old, Thai, American, interracial. All characters are portrayed convincingly and sympathetically with the author’s great skill.
To summarize each story…
In Farangs, a teen-aged boy with a Thai mother, who caters to tourists, and an American absentee father searches for love among the tourists, despite his mother’s stern warnings.
In At The Cafe Lovely, a young boy learns important life lessons about class warfare in the new Thailand by shadowing his older brother.
In Draft Day, the friendship of two teen-aged boys is tested when a corrupt system allows one boy’s family to exploit the benefits of wealth while the other is not so lucky.
In Sightseeing, a mother’s developing blindness creates a rift between her and her teen-aged son.
In Priscilla The Cambodian, two young boys learn hard lessons about poverty and xenophobia and the unexpected kindness of strangers.
In Don’t Let Me Die In This Place, an elderly man moves from the US to Bangkok to be with his son’s family and has a hard time adjusting.
In Cockfighter, the longest and most intense story in the collection, a Thai girl comes of age in a corrupt and brutal village and learns that she’s not the only one in the village who is in pain.