I’m recovering from an ear infection this past week that affected my ability to concentrate, so I haven’t been able to get as much reading done as I had hoped. I’ve been able to plow through, but it will probably be slow-going for a couple more weeks, which unfortunately doesn’t bode well for my ginormous fall reading list (especially given the fact that I’m also a bit behind on my summer reading too and have been trying to catch up). That said, I am determined to get through all the 2026 books I’ve been planning to read, since I want a clean slate as much as possible going into 2027 given the number of anticipated releases I already have lined up (I’m sure fellow bookworms can relate).
Anyway, working my way (slowly) through my fall TBR, I decided to start with one of this season’s most anticipated releases, R.F. Kuang’s Taipei Story. Kuang’s newest work is a bit of a departure for her genre-wise, as she goes the straight up literary fiction route this time around (as opposed to her previous works which leaned more toward fantasy, dark academia, and literary satire), and while I did enjoy this one more than the other works of hers that I’ve read (Yellowface and Katabasis, specifically), it didn’t blow me away in the way that I was expecting it to. This is an important point to make in this case because for me personally, out of all of Kuang’s works, Taipei Story is the one most in my wheelhouse – from a genre perspective, literary fiction is one of my favorite genres to read, and from a subject matter perspective, my Chinese background means that I am intimately familiar with the language and culture elements that form the crux of the story. Most of all though, I also share a background with the story’s protagonist Lily Chen, being from an immigrant family and part of the Chinese diaspora, who grew up speaking mostly English in everyday life and Chinese only with my family while learning the mechanics of the language (Mandarin, that is) mostly through school. To this point, I could absolutely relate to Lily’s struggles with learning Chinese, as I had similar experiences during my own undergraduate education pursuing a degree in Asian Studies. Indeed, the scenes involving Lily’s one-on-one class with Teacher Sun reminded me of the independent study class I took during that time, which was taught by one of the university’s esteemed Chinese literature professors. I remember the feelings of anxiety when, for my final project in the class, I had to write a critical analysis essay on Su Tong’s classic novel Raise the Red Lantern entirely in Chinese – a feat made even more difficult given the fact that computer-based foreign language typing applications were not common back then, so I actually had to write the entire essay out by hand (though I guess the silver lining is that I was able to get plenty of practice writing Chinese characters). Having to endure my own “sea of red” for many of the assignments in that class, I could definitely understand Lily’s feelings of frustration and inadequacy in those instances.
When I read a book where there are so many aspects that I’m familiar with (i.e. the language, culture, history, etc.), it usually enhances the reading experience for me. In this instance, Kuang packed her novel not just with tons of language-related and historical elements that I was already familiar with, she also incorporated a lot of film, literature, food, and pop culture references that I also recognized. Yet, oddly enough, while reading this book, I didn’t feel particularly connected to either the story or the characters. Now that I think about it, this seems to be a common problem I have with Kuang’s books – regardless of how much certain elements of the story seem to resonate with me (familiarity with the subject matter and/or cultural elements, a shared background with the main character, etc.), I always feel a bit of an emotional distance with her works that makes it difficult to connect or engage at a level that would make the read 5 stars for me. I am not able to pinpoint exactly what the issue is; as I mention in my previous reviews of Kuang’s works, she is obviously a skillful, intelligent writer – but perhaps that is precisely the problem: I think sometimes Kuang’s highly impressive academic pedigree (undergraduate studies at Georgetown, master’s degree from Cambridge, another master’s degree from Oxford, currently working on a PhD at Yale) ends up getting in the way of her stories, albeit unintentionally. With Taipei Story, there were large swaths of the book that, to me at least, seemed to contain “information dumps” which felt irrelevant to the story – in turn, these “information dumps” were often relayed in a matter-of-fact manner that made me feel like I was reading an excerpt from an academic essay or a textbook. Of course, there is nothing wrong with showing off what you know (it IS one of the golden rules of writing, after all, to “write what you know”), especially if you’ve put in the effort to do the copious amounts of research (which Kuang obviously does with every book) to back up that knowledge, but I think the less-than-seamless way that knowledge (research) is incorporated into the story can, in some instances, have an unintended negative effect on the story (at least for this reader it did).
Overall, I would have to say that this was definitely an enjoyable read that I liked well enough (I mean, I did give it 4 stars when both Yellowface and Katabasis got 3.5 stars and 3 stars, respectively), but I didn’t “love” it like I initially thought I would. That said, I definitely continue to be interested in reading Kuang’s works – though perhaps knowing that her books usually take a little more time for me to complete, I should plan better in the future and wait to tackle them during a time when I’m under less pressure to get through a ridiculously long TBR list
Received ARC from William Morrow via NetGalley.
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