The South - Tash Aw
My initial impression of The South was that I loved it. When I was about a third of the way through the book I began looking for reviews and reactions for it, curious why I hadn't seen many people talking about this absolutely stunning novel. Now that I've finished it, though, I think I understand why this one has been a bit quiet. I definitely liked it, and it contains some of the most quietly beautiful prose I've ever read, but by the end I was just a little exhausted by it.
The South tells the story of a Malaysian family who inherit a farm. One summer they move from the city to the country to visit said farm and get the lay of the land (so to speak). While they're there, their son begins an affair with the son of the farmhand who's been looking after the property.
On paper this should be right up my street. Before I read it I was thinking about it in terms of Call Me By Your Name and Lie With Me, books that encapsulate a moment in time, laced through with intense emotion and that feeling of an overwhelming first love. That wasn't quite what I got, and while it's not fair to judge a book based on my expectations of what I wanted it to be, those comparisons definitely lingered in my mind as I was reading and The South never quite managed to live up to them.
If I were to choose one word to describe this novel it would be 'languid'. The prose is measured and gorgeous throughout, the narration drifting between past and present tenses and third and first person. The overall effect was of building a hazy dreamscape of nostalgic memory. I was never quite sure whether events were being shown to us chronologically, never wholly sure who was narrating at any given time. Not a lot really happens, and coming to the end of the book felt like waking from a dream that's already trying to slip away. Everything felt distant and indistinct, so that I was left with an overall impression of what had happened but no real specifics.
At times the lazy, ambling pace and lack of anything really happening approaches becoming boring, and it's only saved by Tash Aw's stunning prose. Every page, every sentence, is beautiful, building this really gorgeous mosaic of language that contributes to the dreamlike quality of the novel. But it's so heightened, and for so long, that as the book goes on it starts to become a little fatiguing. I really could have done with some more workmanlike prose scattered in and amongst the novel to juxtapose the beauty and give me a chance to really appreciate it. As it is, I felt like the prose often got in the way of me developing any real connection with the characters or knowing much about them - I felt detached from them, like I was watching them through morning mist or thin curtains fluttering in a late summer breeze, aware of them but unable to fully know them.
This is a really lovely book, and I'm glad I read it. There's a part of me that wants to know what happens next for these characters. But I also feel like I've had my time with them now, and that I don't need to come back for another three books.