I wrote a review of this book on my blog, overall it was not that interesting and it's unclear what happens at the end of the novel. https://macymakesmagic.com/2018/04/23/notes-of-a-crocodile/ ( )

notes of a crocodile by qiu miaojin was a book i was hugely excited for, and it had amazing flashes of brilliance, but some elements fell flat. however, i think that was my fault because i tried to read it while i was commuting and my attention was not what it should have been.
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the story of Lazi, a lesbian in post-martial law Taiwan, is told through diary entries interspersed with elements of what i believe to be excerpts from the narrator’s novel about crocodiles which serves as an allegory for being a closeted person in Taiwan. Lazi goes through a failed romance that never leaves her, and influences all other relationships in her life. honestly? i almost preferred the parts about the crocodiles. this is a great book, but you need to be prepared to pay attention and maybe even take notes. i would say while it is a very important book, it was not my favorite book ( )

this was really hard for me. i feel like i would have liked this book better when i was younger, but as i age, these hard to understand books are less and less appealing. i really didn't understand the crocodile metaphor, except as people not fitting in, as a way to "other" people. but it didn't flow well to me; i didn't get a real feel for any of the characters; i didn't care about them or understand them. so much of it felt like it was overwritten, was flowery language that didn't read right at all. ( )

I'd never heard of this book before, but bought it based on NYRB classics, translated fiction, queer misfits, and I don't think I've read any authors from Taiwan before. Plus this cover is just fantastic. Still, I had very little in the way of expectations going in.

Now I am struggling to find a way to talk about it. Central to the story is the narrator, known to us only by the nickname Lazi, and her on-again off-again love with Shui Ling. Told from excerpts from ten notebooks Lazi wrote over a period encompassing what seems to be the last few years of high school (except she is no longer living at home?) through what seems to be a prestigious college -- as she struggles to figure out life and love (mostly love) with the help of a few other queer kids who all seem to be cut off from any larger, established LGBTQIA+ community and so are figuring things out in a vacuum with mostly only their self-doubts, fleeting obsessions, and the judgements of society at large to guid them. The fragmented run-on sentence above is somewhat indicative of the fragmented nature of the text, which sometimes shifts backwards and forwards in time and also sideways to a crocodile analogy in a way that is sometimes bewildering but no more so than it would be to live that way. Most of the characters involved seem to be academically gifted, analytical, obscure-reference making types instantly familiar to anyone who's ever been on a college campus. I couldn't help but love them all and fiercely wish for them to be scooped up by queer elders to share with them joy and radical acceptance.

Have already acquired her other novel. ( )

While I appreciate the what was being done in this book, and it did what it set out to, I struggled to find hardly anything I liked it. I didn't rate it as low as I was going to, because even though I didn't like it myself it was so inertly representative of what being that age, and struggling with everything this books covers, that I felt it was only fair. However it is a real reminder that all of that was really horrible and to read about someone else going through didn't make it more poignant.

I'm sure that is an audience out there for this book. I am just not it. ( )