Disorientation is the right word. This novel was a wild ride. At times, compelling, and at others, insidious, the book tells the story of PhD student Ingrid's attempts to finish her dissertation on poet Xiao-Wen Chou, and the shocking secrets she uncovers about not only him, but her tutor, and the university, too. I liked Ingrid as a character, but at times she felt upstaged by her best friend, and there were moments when I wanted so badly for her to open her eyes and dump her fetishising partner. At its heart, this novel is a satire, and it tackles issues such as racism and sexism in academia, yellowface, and the fetishisation of Asian women by white men. But the issue with satire is that it's hard to maintain over 400 pages, so there were moments when the narrative was edge-of-your-seat compelling, but there were others when things seemed to tip over into unrealistic. My main issue was that satire is meant to be darkly funny, and although there were moments when this book was funny, overall, it the humour just didn't hit the mark for me.

I loved this book and the way it makes such a bold statement about identity and culture whilst being funny and very easy to read. It has a ll the elements if a compelling story and so many twists!

A sharp satire of academia that also explores Asian-American identity - one of the best books I’ve read this year! The comedy never feels forced and Ingrid is an endearing MC.

This book has so much promise and overall is A good read. I just wish that the main character was more fleshed out - she seemed to loose her steam at times which was sad. But overall a really interesting novel.

Great read, really enjoyable.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

What a witty, clever, biting satire!
Ingrid Yang is a Taiwanese-American PHD student trying to finish her thesis on a Chinese poet, Xiao Wen-Chu. While researching, she makes a discovery about the poet that upends her work - and her life!
There are so many themes in this book: racism, Yellowface, sexism, cultural appropriation, free speech - and all tackled with dry humour. The plot rattles along, reaching absurdist heights - all in all a necessary and engaging read. I loved it!
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. All views are my own.

I didn’t really know what to expect from this book other than a good college story with themes of race and identity. I’m really glad that was the case because I had a great time unravelling the heroine, Ingrid and hearing her story.

Ingrid is now in her fourth year of her PhD and she wants nothing more than to finally finish her dissertation on celebrated Chinese poet, Xiao-Wen Chou. When she finds a note in one of the university’s Chou archives, Ingrid thinks it might finally lead her to the breakthrough she desperately needs. But she uncovers something much bigger than she could possibly have imagined. Cue a string of campus shenanigans and a journey to discover herself alongside a deep-seated mystery that no one saw coming.

As a Taiwanese-American, Ingrid has dealt with white people assuming that her English isn’t good or that she’ll struggle in American education. These prejudices are undoubtedly common amongst non-white people throughout their lives and I appreciated the author highlighting things like this. It’s not something I’ve ever had to deal with but it was eye-opening to get an insight into this experience.

Ingrid grew up with exclusively white friends and she talks a lot about how that affected her. We all know these types of beautiful and popular girls, who potentially see a mixed-race girl as a novelty and therefore, a fun addition to the group. Like a lot of people who feel out of place, she makes sure to poke fun about herself before anyone else can. Being in control of the bullying by doing it yourself is a defence mechanism and one that so many of us recognise in ourselves.

One thing that I love about Ingrid and how she was characterised is her imperfectness. Even as a POC, she is guilty to being complicit to racism and she is strong enough to own up to it. She knows she has to do the work to be better and that her relationship with white people and institutions is a difficult one. If Twitter is anything to go by, it does sometimes feel like only white people can be racists. Here is an Asian-American heroine written by an Asian-American author clearly saying that anyone has the potential to hold racial prejudices.

The humour in this book was great. I did laugh out loud a few times and it was often at the expense of Ingrid’s fiance Stephen. He just seemed like such a pathetic character and I wanted to tell Ingrid that she really could do better. Stephen is the kind of white guy, who clearly has a fascination with Asian women and to me, it was obvious that it was their Asianness that he was into. Therefore, he was an easy target to aim my eyerolls and sighs at.

I love Ingrid’s relationships with both her best friend Eunice and her rival Vivian Vo. I felt sure that she and Eunice could conquer anything together and I couldn’t help but detect a hint of admiration for Vivian in Ingrid, despite her insistence that she hated her. Disorientation does a great job of championing female friendship and it was a really lovely addition to what would otherwise have been a rather serious, academic drama.

Disorientation is a thought-provoking, witty, debut novel with memorable characters and a dismantling of white supremacy in Western academia. It asks the reader to consider the importance of telling our own stories and establishing our true identities while uncovering the chaos that could result from not doing so.

Unfortunately this book isn’t one for me. I really wanted to enjoy this. I kept thinking, any minute now it’ll click, I’ll be hooked and will race to the end. But it just hasn’t happened, even at a third of a way through. It’s a DNF for me, so,I won’t be publishing a review anywhere.

This was amazing!!!! I found myself laughing out loud while reading this book (even in public). It is satirical, raises fascinating questions, has well rounded characters and an amazing plot.

Can't wait to force everyone to read this!!

Is this a campus novel? No. It is however about a PhD student called Ingrid who is struggling to write her dissertation on a foremost Chinese American poet - only to discover after a bewildering wild goose chase that the man is not who everyone thinks.

Ingrid is a very real if irritating heroine who sometimes can’t see what is in front of her, what’s fantastic about her though is that she does change. In the beginning she is closed minded and by the end, while not a total radical she does understand why it might be important to analyse her day to day society as well as the words on the page.

Yes, one or two events are a bit over the top and not everyone is as fleshed out a character as Ingrid several do have layers and even ideas they get the chance to voice. We live in complicated times and this novel shows a lot of the identity discourse in a lived-in way, where the protagonist herself isn’t a fan but starts to see the relevance and the answers aren’t cut and dried. The ending is well done in terms of what the world allows. (Please note, this is not a romantic novel.)

But the writing is what carries ‘Disorientation’. The narration really works for me and the dialogue in the forum scene was pitch perfect and the trial dream sequence are memorable for all the right reasons.

With thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was an interesting premise, and often enjoyable, but ultimately didn't quite work for me. Satirizing wokeness can be tricky, especially in a novel—the effect can be much like scrolling through the Facebook comments of a deliberately incendiary post, where you know every genre of commenter already. I felt that the novel's efforts to skewer *everything* could get exhausting—the twists and turns are fun when they work, but after a while they can get stale, and "everything and everyone is awful" isn't quite compelling enough a thesis to hold the book together.

That said, it did make me laugh out loud a few times, and I found Ingrid's characterization really sharp and well done. I would recommend it if you’re a fan of the genre. it just didn’t quite work for me.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC!

Ingrid is in the eighth year of her PhD on canonical Chinese-American poet Xiao-Wen Chou. As a Taiwanese-American student, she’s uncomfortably aware that her white advisor, Michael, directed her towards this topic because of the need for more Asian representation in the East Asian Studies department, even though she really wanted to study modernism (‘Did some people actually believe a poem about a red wheelbarrow was about a red wheelbarrow when it was obviously about existential dread?’) She’s happily engaged to white boyfriend Stephen, a Japanese to English translator with no knowledge of spoken Japanese, who is reassuringly boring (‘One got the feeling if he were caught in a fire, he would remain calmly smiling even as the flames consumed his flesh’.) Her Korean-American best friend and department ally Eunice shares her hatred of fellow grad student Vivian Vo, an Asian lesbian activist who writes papers called things like ‘Still Thirsty: Why Boba Liberalism Will Not Save Us’. However, the calm order of Ingrid’s existence is upended when she makes an unexpected discovery about Xiao-Wen Chou, which may change the course of her life (and her dissertation).

Disorientation, Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut, is the second novel on Asian-American representation in the arts that I’ve read this month (the other is Rebecca Kuang’s Yellowface, which I’ve not reviewed yet because it isn’t out until next year). And it’s by far the more successful of the two, largely because Chou is unafraid to reach real satirical heights, whereas Yellowface promised satire but actually stayed within realistic bounds. The first half of Disorientation, as Ingrid persists in existing in her own bubble despite all evidence to the contrary, is a triumph, pivoting around an incredible scene when she ‘infiltrates’ the POC Caucus on campus to spy on their activities and witnesses a debate about the casting of a white actress in Xiao-Wen Chou’s play Chinatown Blues:

“Are they going to make her eyes slanty – “

” – ‘slanty’ is a derogatory term – “

” – literally a shape, so does that mean I’m not allowed to say ‘square’ or ‘circular’ either – “

” – can’t believe we’re still discussing if this is okay – “

” – not the 1950s anymore – “

” – you know what else was popular in the 1950s? Book burnings –”

“Well, speaking as a Chinese American man – “

“Well, speaking as a Chinese American woman – “

“Well, speaking as a queer disabled Chinese first-generation child of immigrants –"

At its best, Chou’s satire reminded me of other blisteringly smart works like Paul Beatty’s The Sellout and Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby, exploring structural marginalisation while also thinking about how oppressed communities can turn on each other. It also brilliantly captures the hothouse atmosphere of academia, where the next chapter of your thesis can be more important than your love life, mental health or friendships.

Disorientation, for me, struggled a little in its final chapters, where Chou’s desire to write a realistic character arc for Ingrid seemed in tension with Ingrid’s deliberately exaggerated ignorance at the start of the novel. Some aspects of the novel’s conclusion are absolutely satisfying – for example, how we reassess Eunice, who originally seemed like an even more ditzy version of Ingrid – but the tone becomes a bit jarring, as a book that was soaring to surreal heights is brought abruptly down to earth. Chou ultimately spells out her messages a bit too clearly (though not nearly as obviously as Kuang’s Yellowface, which becomes didactic near the end). Nevertheless, this is a novel that thinks about so much, and leaves the reader with so much to think about. It was one of my most anticipated reads of 2022, and I certainly wasn’t disappointed.

3.75 stars. I don't quite know what to make of this book. It definitely wasn't what I was expecting from a literary campus novel but that doesn't mean I didn't like it. As a satire it was pretty biting but at times felt a bit predictable or like it was full of caricatures, but maybe that was the point. The pacing was a lot off, I found it a struggle for the first 150 or so pages then flew through the last part as the action really picked up.

Chou has written a deeply insightful and startlingly original novel that made me gasp, laugh, and even flinch at some of the circumstances Ingrid finds herself in. The middle of the book reads like a beautiful disaster that’s impossible to look away from, especially when Ingrid and her friend, Eunice, push through with their investigation into the life of Xiao-Wen Chou. You know it’s not going to end well, but you keep reading because you just have to find out. Just when you think the plot is crazy, it gets even crazier. But Chou deftly grounds everything to reality such that it reads like a madcap adventure. Something you’d want to read, but not exactly live through in real life.

Disorientation tells the story of Ingrid Yang, a PhD student coming to the end of her doctoral program with yet an unfinished manuscript on a Chinese poet that she is not entirely a fan of. However one day, she finds a curious note in the archives while researching, leading to a journey with so many twists and surprises that you never really know what's going to happen next.

I loved reading this novel. What I will say is that having finished it, it was not what I expected it was going to be about, and I mean that in the best possible way. The book touches on so many themes in the book including being the child of immigrants, academic pressure, imposter syndrome, racism, sexism, cultural appropriation and constantly being at conflict between two cultures. However, the book never felt overly packed with these themes and there was enough nuance and depth when these issues were touched upon that it felt natural and authentic. I found myself really rooting for Ingrid by the end of the book, and it was a joy to read. This is definitely in my Top 5 of the best books I've read this year so far!

It's a clever idea and a good plot - probably partly inspired by the real-life story of "Yi-Fen Chou" - which at times I found poorly executed. The main character, Ingrid, is a Taiwanese American PhD student, who struggles to finish her dissertation on Chinese American poet Xiao-Wen Chou. She lives with her fiance Stephen, who is translating a book by a Japanese author. The book starts nearly like a thriller - a mysterious note is found in the archives of Barnes University, where she spends hours trying to find a new angle to approach her research, and Ingrid is compelled to start her own investigation on Xiao-Wen Chou and the mysterious John Smith who left a note in the archives. Her friend Eunice and her try and find him and Ingrid discovers the terrible truth about the famous author and the mysterious author of the note.

The stories of Asian fetishization, racism, yellowface, abusive relationships, drug abuse... were very cleverly woven into the narrative, and despite the many different angles and nuances, it didn't feel forced like it sometimes does - I find that recent books that try to tackle these topics sometimes want to put too much into 300 pages. What bothered me was at times the writing of the novel itself. The hallucinations suffered by Ingrid were an interesting addition but they were at times too long to my taste; the articles, the meeting notes, the texts, the various transcribed notes became a bit too much. Adding different media forms to a novel is a smart way of creating dynamism but I find that it also creates mess if done too enthusiastically.

Overall though it was enjoyable, and I would recommend the book - it gave me food for thought beyond the yellowface narrative, and says a lot about modern academia (that part of the book felt particularly well-researched and documented), despite being sometimes disorganised. The characters felt genuine and cleverly constructed. The book was very nuanced, which is not easy to achieve.

It's written accessibly and is actually compelling for the first part - up to when she finds out the author's secret. Then it drops off steeply, with the author not knowing where to take the story, so it meanders pointlessly and makes a lot of really obvious, really tedious points about woke university culture. It's so boring and unnecessarily padded out the book. A lot of features of the story are equally obvious - where the great boyfriend thing is going, who her real true love is, etc. Not engaging at all. Also, are translators of books really the stars? I don't think so. Generally, a really feeble, empty novel that's not worth bothering with.

The blurb sounded really good. However all went down hill and turned into nonsense. It was becoming a chore to read it. I thought it was going to tackle the issues in a different manner, nore for a grown audience. Unfortunately this book wasn't for me.

Thanks to Pan MacMillan and Netgalley for the ARC.

The book centres around the life of Ingrid, a young Asian-American woman living in America. The story follows her as she navigates life, family, friends, relationships, and her PhD.

It’s an enjoyable read. It’s funny at times, and sad in others; particularly when Ingrid recounts her experiences of racism, difficulties with her self esteem, identity, body image, and relationships. There are some decent plot twists. It takes a particularly interesting and critical look at race and society.

Part literary mystery, part satirical take on the American campus novel, Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut’s a blistering exploration of what it means to be an Asian American woman in contemporary American society, represented through her central character Ingrid Yang. Ingrid Yang’s a variation on the classic “innocent abroad”, born to Taiwanese parents she’s spent most of her life attempting to pass as white, she only dates white men, and she avoids the company of the more politically-vocal Asian American student body. Through happenstance, and the blatant manipulations of her almost-exclusively white tutors, she’s ended up in the Asian American Studies Department in Barnes University. Now in her eighth year of post-grad study, she’s stalled on her thesis. Her subject’s the work of Chinese American poet Xiao-Wen Chou, aka the “Chinese Robert Frost”. Xiao-Wen Chou has become a canonical figure, the voice of Chinese American experience: extracts from his poems feature on posters and the kind of inspirational images routinely found framed in restaurants and dentists’ waiting rooms. He’s been so exhaustively researched Ingrid’s struggling to find anything to add to this vast body of existing material. Then a chance discovery sets her, and close friend Eunice, on a quest to uncover a mystery that will change everything, reaching into every corner of Ingrid’s existence.

What starts out fairly conventionally shifts gears into full-on satire after a major plot twist – one that will lead to scenes of absurdist proportions. What Ingrid uncovers takes her deep into a web of literary fraud and academic conspiracy. But, more importantly, it also forces her to confront the issues she’s been dodging: from racial stereotyping to tokenism and quota filling. Chou’s narrative’s a wonderfully wry, incisive take on the intricacies of racism towards Asian Americans from cultural appropriation to full-on violence. Chou also constructs a deeply-convincing, well-researched, portrait of the devastating impact of white male fetishization of East Asian women throughout recent history, a theme which harks back to her searing, viral essay “What White Men Say in Our Absence”, and here goes hand in hand with exposing the hypocrisy that can lurk behind a veneer of support from white people. I found Chou’s work accessible and fluid, deceptively so at times, the territory she covers, and the questions she raises, are important and timely. There are, admittedly, moments when her narrative threatens to go off the rails but even then, I still found it lucid and compelling.