Kirjailijakuva

Andrew Koh

Teoksen Glass cathedral tekijä

4 teosta 20 jäsentä 2 arvostelua

Tekijän teokset

Glass cathedral (1995) 14 kappaletta
About literature (1999) 4 kappaletta
About Literature Vol 2 (2006) 1 kappale

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Jäseniä

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asianamlitfans | 1 muu arvostelu | Jan 8, 2015 |
Thanks to Gronseth for loaning his copy to me.

Andrew Koh is a gay Singaporean Chinese writer, and his main character in this story is Colin, a young gay undergraduate at a university in Singapore. Perhaps there is an autobiographical element to this affair? Hm?

To get a taste of this sort of writing, I will quote from the only naughty bit in the book, on page 64:

I did not feel awkward or constrained when James kissed me on the lips in the safety of his room. He had sense it, for it was not the usual peck. He kept his thin sensual lips on mine while caressing my back. He glided his hands up past my shoulders and ran his fingers through my hair. I responded with an embrace. I liked the feel of his tongue in my mouth, tickling. French kiss, eh, I thought to myself. The logos of our tongues played in the darkness. James moved his hands downwards to my seat and explored its curvature through my trousers and briefs. "Mmmm, nice and tight," he murmured. He squeezed me and pulled me to him; our groins kissed. I felt the virility of our passion in that clasp.

His hands began releasing my body from its social masks, button by button; the shirt followed the jacket and the tie to the floor. The cool air touched my naked skin and a shiver of love ran down my spine. James worked his way round my hips and unbuckled my leather strap, unhooked and unzipped my trousers. He pulled them down and in a propitiating position, teased me out of my briefs.

In penetrating me, James drew me out. I felt loved, I felt alive, I felt I was somebody, incarnated in the love between men. I felt special, particularly loved and loved in a particular way.

This is, as you might expect, a coming-of-age story about a boy who is nervous about his sexuality. As in the passage above, there are parts of this story that are almost touching, where we can truly empathize with the boy and feel great desire and great fear together.

But too often the results of Mr. Koh's efforts are neither a portrait of a character we can care about, nor a story of any interest. Like all too many would-be writers, he suffers from maudlin self-absorption, the sort of egoism that thinks a set of your own remarks on the difficulty of growing up might well be a novel. No, you fool, you have only an idea for an essay. To write a novel, you need a rich world of characters facing more than one kind of crisis, and you need to map out how to bring us into your world in a very deliberate way. By that standard, this is not even the beginning of a novel -- rather it is merely an essay pretending to be a novel.
… (lisätietoja)
 
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phramok | 1 muu arvostelu | Apr 12, 2010 |

Tilastot

Teokset
4
Jäseniä
20
Suosituimmuussija
#589,235
Arvio (tähdet)
½ 2.6
Kirja-arvosteluja
2
ISBN:t
11