2.5. Kinda wild. A midlife crisis and an affair with a (living?) doll. Social commentary not-so-thinly veiled, a good dash of surrealism and floaty prose. A nice mix of stuff but nothing came together exceptionally. When Tse publishes again I'll be there, as a debut, this gives a lot to think about. Some bits are uncomfortable with the fist-sized dolls licking our 50-year-old protagonist to completion, but Tse did keep me generally engaged, even when I was a little taken aback. Reminiscent of Murakami in many ways I think, but nice and refreshing to read something surreal and weird, about sexualised women (young women too, and literally very small and childlike women), not written by Murakami, or any other man, for that matter. May add some more thoughts but it's late and I have work in the morning.

This isn't published till early next year. Thanks to Fitzcarraldo for the ARC.

A few friends have helpfully teased out some of the intertextual references in this (to Galatea, to Hoffmann, to Ovid), but though often a sucker for intertextuality, I couldn’t warm to Owlish. It left me in a state of part confusion, unsure if I had missed a chapter somewhere, and part complete indifference at a clichéd tale of a university professor and his midlife crisis with a robot/doll who may have… a soul?

There were some decent set pieces, some nice writing about a fictionalized Hong Kong that might have moved me more if I knew Hong Kong, some decent attempts to humanize the doll, but none of this broke through the barrier of my resistance to caring about the story. I am left genuinely puzzled as to why Tse wanted to tell the story of Hong Kong and its recent troubles through this lens. Occasionally it all tips into the land of fairy tale and magic, but even this failed to arouse my interest.

I was probably more interested in the contraband urban plan for the Nevers twenty years ago than I was in anything in the plot.

2.5 stars because it’s not badly written.

Owlish's blurb sounded interesting and I'd say the writing itself was enjoyable, but I guess I didn't get the full picture nor the connections between the history of Hong Kong and mainland China and Professor Q's private and work life. It seemed more that Q was having an issue with getting older, never receiving the academic accolades he desired nor sexual satisfaction from his marriage with Maria. I wasn't able connect the dots between all of what was going on.

I personally found the "erotic/dreamlike" encounters with his dolls icky. I understand his longing for the young and beautiful, but as a professor who deals with students on a daily basis, it made me quite uncomfortable. I found Maria's parts way more interesting than Professor Q's in and out of dreams and reality.

So altogether, this wasn't a hit for me personally.

Thank you Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

In "Owlish", Tse is addressing political matters through the means of fantasy and the tradition of fable, thus critiquing, albeit indirectly, China's political stance and encoding both oppresion and the struggle to resist.

2.5 ⭐️

Our protagonist, Professor Q embarks on a passionate love affair with one of his dolls, Aliss. Blurring the lines between fantasy and reality through dreamlike prose, Owlish is social commentary on colonialism and police brutality.

Unfortunately, this novel just wasn’t for me. At times, I really enjoyed the dreamy aspects and Maria’s parts. But overall, I found it too centred around the male gaze and the surrealist became absurdist and it was just lost on me. I found myself checking how much I had left more than I wanted to.

It has taken me a while to formulate my thoughts on Owlish. On the face of it, the story centres on Q, a married professor of literature living in the fictional city of Nevers. Professor Q is fifty years old. More interestingly though, he has a peculiar and disturbing fascination with dolls. In Owlish, we see Professor Q acquire Aliss for his collection, a life-sized ballerina doll with whom he embarks on an affair, of sorts when she mysteriously springs to life.

I enjoyed Owlish. The story flips and flops between real life and surrealism, which appeals to me a lot. There are echoes of the story of Coppelia, Lolita, Alice in Wonderland, Klara and the Sun and 1Q84. It is also beautifully written and translated. The descriptions are engaging, if bizarre, and the story flows as coherently as you can expect of such a weird book.

As you might imagine, there’s also a complexity to Owlish. While Q is distracted by Aliss and their affair, protests are spreading across Nevers and his students are disappearing. It is clear that the real story of Owlish is a commentary on censorship and oppression, British colonialism and recent/current events in Hong Kong. While it is pacy, I wouldn’t recommend reading it fast. There is a lot to digest and ponder, and many, many avenues to be explored. I feel that gaps in my own knowledge of China/the Chinese government/Hong Kong probably held me back from a deeper reading of this, and I feel I should probably do some research and then return to it to see if my understanding of it changes.

Overall, however, I enjoyed Owlish. It drew me in. I found it disturbing and uncomfortable at points. At others, I felt a bit lost and displaced. There is a lot to take away from this book and a lot to think about, so I’d highly recommend it if you’re looking for a read with depth.

Thank you to Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo Editions for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Nebulous.......

Tse writes a story set in an alternate Hong Kong, a story floating in the reality of suppression, beatings, disappearances and the dreams. Dreams of an erotic life, dreams of a loving life, dreams of a connected life.

But are the suppressed the only ones dreaming. Are the suppressors dreaming too?

I ended up in a sort of a 'never' land, which is quite fitting considering this alternative Hong Kong was called Nevers. Where I was I was not sure, neither was I sure of what to think of what I was reading.

Well-written and starts very strong. Builds an engaging and interesting world, and the parallels between the world of the novel and real life situation in China is interesting. The novel leans heavily into surrealism - which is inventive and fun at first, though it starts to delve further and further into surrealism I found that it got a bit lost. I was left wondering if I would have got more from it if I knew the politics surrounding the real life situation a bit better. There were definitely parts that I really enjoyed and that I think are really effective, but for me there was just too much that I didn't fully understand what the author was going for.

Thanks to Fitzcarraldo editions and Netgalley for the e-ARC.

Gorgeous, lush, dreamy little story that transported me fully and didn't let go until the very end. I loved losing myself in this.

This is a difficult book to review. Parts of the story I enjoyed, especially those around Maria and Professor Q’s ‘real life’ but the dream/fantasy sequences I found quite boring and confusing. I don’t think I have enough knowledge of the political situation in Hong Kong and because of this I think a lot of the meaning behind this book was lost on me. Nevertheless it was an interesting read and I am now keen to do some research on Hong Kong.

I don’t think I’m intelligent enough to appreciate this as much as it should be. I’m sure it’s amazing for someone though.

I am afraid this book was lost on me as I don’t have the knowledge or sphere of literal and cultural understanding to appreciate the meaning behind it. At face value a man is going through a midlife crisis as his country is undergoing great change. The writing is colourful and imaginative but the gradual descent into erotic dreams and fantasy became a little wearing. The times when real life intruded - his relationship with his wife and more rational goings on at his place of work were enjoyable and meaningful but unfortunately I was unable to finish the book as it was a bit beyond me.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an ARC.

Owlish begins as a thinly veiled discussion of life in Hong Kong, the memory of British colonialism, and the increasing role and power of mainland Chinese influence. Yet Tse soon brings in an element of fantasy and interweaves these dream-like sections with depictions of police brutality and suppression of education and self-governance.

There are echoes of both Pygmalion in Metamorphoses and Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita throughout the novel, with Tse masterfully dancing between an imbalanced romance and a growing sense of insanity.

However, certain parts of the novel are stronger than others, with Maria’s sections by far being a standout amongst some chapters that occasionally seemed to lose their way. At points the fantasy sections became absurdist and lost both my understanding and interest, and had me repeatedly checking how much I had left to read.

The denouement, too, was underwhelming. With such varied plot lines through the novel, I hoped for some clarity and a sense of tying it all together. But what I experienced instead was the feeling of Tse gesturing at a pile of plot and just saying ‘here you go’.

I understand Tse’s intentions with introducing fantasy into social commentary as a way of showing a different face of the oppression with which Hong Kong natives are familiar and - in a two-birds-with-one-stone manoeuvre - simultaneously evading censorship. But it could have been executed more eloquently.

This story situates itself in a long tradition of using fable, fairy-tale and fantasy as subversion, a way to encode repression, tyranny and oppressions in a seemingly innocuous way to evade censorship - it's storytelling as a form of resistance.

What I like about this is the multiple echoes of key names and elements which create diverse intertextual links: Nevers (Hong Kong), for example, reminded me of Never Never Land (Peter Pan) and Aliss of Coppelia (the ballet based on a story by [author:E.T.A. Hoffmann|7267068]) as well as the automata of Nabakov's [book:King, Queen, Knave|43456535]. Before that, there are the classical myths of Pygmalion and his statue (named Galathea in a later tradition) - and Ovid's [book:Metamorphoses|1715] seems a particularly potent intertext here, as the poem itself uses cover of myths to expose the abuse of power of the Augustan regime.

There are places where the absurdist fantasy hits the spot, others where I was lost, and I don't think this completely comes together with coherency by the end. Some of the politics on e.g. British colonialism seem laboured - but this is still an interesting read for the way it articulates struggle via dreamlike and fantastic narrative.

i read this one super quickly (within the span of a couple of hours, perhaps even a little less than that), but i still highly enjoyed it. it kind of reminded me of wong kar-wai’s films, in a way, and also made me think of kazuo ishiguro’s klara and the sun, even if the subject matter is slightly different in this one. the social commentary is also a pretty significant topic here — and i think tse excelled at weaving a direct critique of chinese policies over hong kong & the legacy of colonialism with its more fantastical aspects. overall, a very pleasant surprise.

I’ve been looking forward to reading Dorothy Tse’s debut novel for some time. Tse’s an acclaimed, Hong Kong writer whose award-winning poems and short stories often feature alternative versions of Hong Kong, fantastical yet grounded in contemporary reality; frequently boasting uprooted characters who may be nameless or known solely by their initials, their experiences shaped by grotesque or macabre incidents. Her novel occupies similar territory, building on the fascination with transformations and metamorphoses detectable in much of her earlier fiction - tracing back to her interest in fairy tales and the offbeat or surrealistic writing of authors like Xi Xi, Bruno Schulz and Walter Benjamin.

Tse’s story is set in the fictional Nevers – a name that recalls the internment camp where Walter Benjamin was held after the Nazi occupation of France. Like that camp Nevers is a sealed area, its closed borders separating the inhabitants from the outside world. Tse’s depiction of Nevers is a thinly-veiled, stand-in for Hong Kong and its features will be familiar to anyone who’s spent time there or knows its history, her descriptions of Nevers's city centre with its tall buildings and laser light shows are a perfect match for the view over Hong Kong Island at night. Tse’s Nevers was once colonised by the Western Valerians whose language dominated its elite and its educational centres but now it’s been handed back to the “motherland” Ksana which has replaced Valerian and the local Southern (Cantonese) language with its own. At the centre of Tse’s narrative are a low-level, floundering, middle-aged academic Professor Q, his outwardly-ordered wife Maria a high-ranking civil servant and Aliss a life-size, music-box ballerina. Their intertwining experiences form the bulk of Tse’s dream-like, enigmatic exploration of political upheaval, identity and self-delusion.

Professor Q and Maria seem settled, a decent apartment, sufficient finance, and for Q the changing Nevers remains a place suffused with “sunshine, dusty glass and the smell of bank notes.” However, Q has a secret, an erotic obsession with female dolls and automata that he indulges whenever he’s alone. But slowly Q’s world is upturned, there are ominous signs and disturbing symbols all around him, a bizarre painting that arrives at his office from an anonymous sender, students disappearing from his lectures, and the weird, underground auction that brings him to Aliss. Meanwhile the rigidly-organised Maria is unnerved by her office rapidly becoming a disturbing site of unexplained disappearances and hints of an appalling fate for the future Nevers.

For the most part, I was quite caught up in this, partly because of my own links to Hong Kong, enjoying its moments of wry humour and absurdist passages. Using fantasy to address political concerns, particularly in contexts where these concerns can’t be directly addressed, is a well-worn tradition from Lao She’s Cat Country onwards, so it’s probably not surprising that this reminded me so strongly of aspects of Yan Ge’s Strange Beasts of China: another recent book indirectly critiquing China’s authoritarian policies. Tse is explicitly building on her own involvement in Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement here. Woven into Tse’s novel are strands from a variety of forms from fairy tale and allegory to Greek myth, echoes of Pygmalion and Galatea jostling with strands from Hoffman’s “The Sandman” albeit with an unexpected, grubbily-Nabokovian tinge. In many ways the result’s fascinating and inventive but I also found it a little slippery and sometimes quite heavy-handed, particularly in Tse’s more anarchic closing sections. And I’m not entirely convinced by Tse’s conclusion. But despite my reservations I still think it’s very much worth reading particularly for fans of writers like Yoko Tawada or Camilla Grudova. Translated here by Natascha Bruce.