Books on Thailand
Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap
“Americans…may pretend to like pad thai or grilled prawns or the occasional curry, but twice a week they need their culinary comforts, their hamburgers and their pizzas,” writes Rattawut Lapcharoensap on the first page of the first short story of his debut collection. Yep. That’s me. And remembering that a German couple I’d met had only had western food once on their multi-month journey, I figured he was a pretty observational guy. Noting his keen observation skills, I picked up a softcover copy and sped through the deftly told stories.
Each of the seven short stories examines a different aspect of Thai life and comes from a separate narrative voice. Readers learn the essential facts of each narrator as their rounded personality characteristics appear. The stories illuminate many facets of life in Thailand, and the concept of how foreigners are (or are not) accepted into Thai culture runs throughout.
A couple of times a chosen word or sentence made me doubt Lapcharoensap’s grasp of the characters’ voices; for instance when the older American male narrator in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place” — while getting bathed in the bathtub — remembers someone back home and describes him as a “poor, beautiful man” and reminisces about Western movies they watched and begins to cry, I believe the narrator is speaking of a lover or someone he’d wished to love. It took me far too many pages to be convinced that was not the case.
But the inconsistencies were few. For the majority of the time I was drawn into the worlds Lapcharoensap had created and didn’t leave until the story’s end.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
—–
Bangkok Babylon by Jerry Hopkins
Disappointed. I don’t remember the last time a book so failed to meet my expectations. Jerry Hopkins is a best-selling author and a previous reporter for Rolling Stone. Although I hadn’t read any of his previous works, I was sure those two facts were enough to make this book a good well-researched read while I was in Bangkok. They weren’t. Bangkok Babylon purported itself to profile some of the city’s most “unforgettable characters,” but “profiles” is too strong a word to use in describing the stories in the book.
I normally love reading about people, but Hopkins falls far short of creating intriguing profiles I have no doubt that he could put on paper. Instead, the book has weak reporting and simply relies on Hopkins’ assurance that he knows the man (indeed, apparently women are forgettable to Hopkins), and the character sketches are built too strongly around gossip he’s heard and then sprinkled with the subject’s own version of the tall-tales about himself. This ends up with the most-entertaining read being his own story; a tongue-in-cheek acceptance of who he is and a witty voice that is lost throughout much of the rest of the other stories.
The book is set up so each chapter or “profile” read as individual creations; readers are often faced with previously profiled characters as if it’s the first time the name has ever crossed our eyes. Finding a narrative arc or logical reason to the order of the characters is difficult as well; even as Hopkins has a friendship with all the men (save the first), he doesn’t use that to transition from one story to the next.
Those who’ve been entrenched in the expat community in Bangkok will probably enjoy reading about odd older fellows they too have come across (well, according to the reviews on Amazon, they do). I mean, that’s why I’ve gotten addicted to low-rated reality shows — watching people I know or people that I know know. But when it comes to high-quality entertainment, I’d recommend something else. Both in TV and in books.
Rating: 1 out of 5
