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Sep 06, 2017lostintheshelves rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This fascinating novel interweaves the story of lesbian college student Lazi (now Chinese slang for lesbian) and her gay and bisexual friends in late 1980s Taiwan with the surreal adventures of the Crocodile, who wears a human suit and tries to escape notice in a society increasing obsessed with crocodiles. It's not for young queers looking for happy stories: all the characters are warped by self-hatred, and constantly trying to "cure" their sexuality, self-mutilating, or (if male) inflicting violence on others. Qiu’s allusions to European avant-garde film (both in the text and in the non-narrative structure) also won’t be for everyone. But it is an important work of both queer and contemporary Chinese literature, and the characters do learn and grow from their mistakes, even if no one but the Crocodile fully embraces their sexuality. It's also a dead-on accurate portrayal of the emotions of young adulthood. Lazi and her friends feel everything intensely, think in terms of grand concepts, and decry the evils of the world while treating their partners badly. More than any other book I've read, it shows how hard it is to disentangle the shame of internalized homophobia with the universal difficulty of creating your first adult relationships. That said, I wish the publisher had included an afterword to provide English-language readers with context, especially about the real-life Taiwanese media obsession with homosexuality the book satirizes, and the character's ideas of masculinity and femininity, which feel very culturally specific and loom large in their attempts to change.