Sightseeing

Starred review from November 15, 2004
The Thailand of Westerners' dreams shares space with a Thailand plagued by social and economic inequality in this auspicious debut collection of seven plaintive and luminous stories. In the title tale—an exquisite meditation on human dependency—a son and his ailing mother must accept the dismal reality of her encroaching blindness and what it means for his plans to attend college away from home. In "Don't Let Me Die in This Place," the most exuberant of the stories, an ornery and uproarious widowed grandfather, recently crippled by a stroke, moves from Maryland to Bangkok to live with his son, Thai daughter-in-law and their two "mongrel children." "Farangs" and "At the Café Lovely" convincingly examine adolescent friendship and love, as does "Priscilla the Cambodian"—though when a refugee camp is torched by native Thai xenophobes, it veers toward the politically dark and ominous. Politics and fear also play a role in "Draft Day," a painfully grim story about two young male friends, one of whom avoids military conscription because of his privileged background, and "Cockfighter," the final and longest of the pieces, in which a berserk local thug rules a town through violence and corruption. Young or old, male or female, all of Lapcharoensap's spirited narrators are engaging and credible. Anger, humor and longing are neatly balanced in these richly nuanced, sharply revelatory tales. Agent, Amy Williams at Collins McCormick Literary Agency. (Jan.)

Forecast:
With foreign rights already sold in eight countries, and blurbs from Charles Baxter and Allan Gurganus, this stellar debut will likely be one of the most widely reviewed and read story collections of the year.

May 1, 2005
Adult/High School -Seven short stories set in Thailand explore the intricacies of modern-day relationships. The overriding themes are not specific to that country, though: each tale focuses on family dynamics and dysfunction. The protagonists in five of the selections are male teens living in or around Bangkok. "Draft Day" addresses the question of loyalty as the narrator allows his parents to bribe an official to keep him from being conscripted. "Sightseeing" tells of a son whose mother is going blind and the ambivalence he feels about living his own life versus caring for her. The last two stories are also first-person narrations, but the voices are different. In "Don't Let Me Die in This Place," an elderly American tries to come to terms -albeit none too gracefully -with his relocation to Thailand to live with his son and Thai daughter-in-law and their "mongrel" children, and "Cockfighting" is told from the perspective of a teen who watches her father become so obsessed with raising roosters that he is blinded to the disintegration of his marriage. In each of the stories, Lapcharoensap offers readers a glimpse of Thailand that they will not find in guidebooks -not only the beauty of this country but also the grit, the overcrowding, and the poverty. More than that, however, he shows with rare wit and insight that coming of age in the world today is a bittersweet and complicated experience regardless of nationality." -Kim Dare, Fairfax County Public Library, VA"

Copyright 2005 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2004
This collection of stories by a 25-year-old Thai American writer must be extraordinary: there's a 50,000-copy first printing and a 16-city author tour, and rights have been sold to eight countries.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2004
This debut collection by 25-year-old Thai American Lapcharoensap is a welcome addition to the continually expanding and diversified realm of Asian American literature. Born in Chicago and raised in Bangkok, the author introduces American readers to lives where activities like cockfighting are seemingly as typical as learning to ride a motorcycle. Though the stories describe a culture that will be foreign to most readers, they contain themes that touch on the human spirit. In the opening piece, "Farangs" (a Thai term for foreigners), the author documents a young man's latest unsuccessful venture in his continual search for true love with foreign women despite the repeated warnings from his mother and best friend. In the final and lengthiest work, "Cockfighter," readers meet Wichian and his family, who all work hard at their menial jobs to build themselves a better life. Wichian, a dabbler in cockfighting, becomes obsessed with the sport and plunges the family into debt. It is in this work that Lapcharoensap's potential as a novelist shines through via an expanded and more complex storyline showing the depth of his characterization. Recommended for all larger collections and essential for libraries serving a Thai American population. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/04.]-Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2004
Even the title of this debut short story collection by a young Thai American writer resonates on many wavelengths as Lapcharoensap considers the significance of seeing and being seen, of tourism and exile. Superbly well paced, nimble, vividly descriptive in their depictions of everything from the pollution-enhanced sunsets of Bangkok to body language, and many faceted in their dramatizations of fractured families, unheralded comings-of-age, and class and cultural conflicts, these tales of modern Thailand are fresh and captivating, funny and sad, and exceptionally astute. A young man whose Thai mother runs a beach hotel and whose American (call me "Sergeant") father is long gone has a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and a penchant for bikinied American tourists. A boy who looks to his moody older brother for love after their father was killed by a giant crate of wooden toys destined for America becomes ill when he eats his first hamburger. Two Thai boys befriend a courageous little Cambodian refugee named Priscilla (as in Presley). In each intriguing, ironic, and empathic story, Lapcharoensap tracks the unintended consequences of globalization and our strivings for self, survival, and love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)